Northwood Space raises $100 million Series B, lands $49 million Space Force deal

WASHINGTON — Northwood Space, a California-based maker of phased-array ground stations, announced Jan. 27 it raised $100 million in Series B funding as government and commercial operators look for ways to expand satellite control capacity.

The round was led by Washington Harbour Partners and co-led by a16z, with participation from Alpine Space Ventures and others. The financing comes nine months after the company announced a $30 million Series A.

Northwood builds electronically steered antennas that communicate with satellites without physically moving the antenna.

The company’s main product is a multi-beam phased array called Portal, designed to add capacity to the ground segment of satellite operations. Northwood says Portal can support links across low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit and geostationary orbit. By electronically steering multiple beams, the system can hand off satellites without mechanical movement.

Space Force contract

Chief executive and co-founder Bridgit Mendler said the new funding follows a $49.8 million contract award from the U.S. Space Force to augment the capacity of the Satellite Control Network. The SCN is used to track launches and early satellite operations, control satellites and provide emergency support to spacecraft that are tumbling or have lost contact.

Legacy SCN parabolic dishes support a single satellite at a time. Northwood says Portal can support eight simultaneous links per site, and a newer version is capable of 10 to 12 beams. Instead of mechanically pointing a dish, phased arrays rely on many small antenna elements and electronic beam steering, allowing one unit to communicate with multiple satellites at once.

During a call with reporters, chief revenue officer Zachary Kirstein said the Space Force contract is a three-year agreement awarded through the Space Systems Command’s Joint Antenna Marketplace, a program aimed at giving the military access to commercial antennas and scheduling resources.

Kirstein said government interest followed an October 2024 demonstration of telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) operations with Planet Labs, which operates imaging satellites in low Earth orbit.

Space Systems Command oversees operation and sustainment of the SCN and has been seeking commercial options to expand capacity. As the U.S. military and allied agencies deploy more satellites, particularly proliferated low Earth orbit constellations, demand for TT&C and data downlink has outpaced what fixed infrastructure alone can handle, officials have said.

Northwood manufactures its phased-array antennas at a 35,000-square-foot facility in Torrance. The company said it produced eight Portal units in December 2025 and has deployed operational systems on two continents. It plans to add eight sites across five continents.

Mendler explained that Northwood’s software integrates orchestration, scheduling and automation to manage when and how satellites uplink and downlink data, drawing a comparison to cloud networking tools used to manage compute workloads. The company offers ground connectivity to satellite operators as a service.