CesiumAstro to scale operations with $470 million in equity and debt financing

SAN FRANCISCO – CesiumAstro is preparing for rapid expansion thanks to an influx of cash announced Feb. 2: $270 million in equity and $200 million in debt financing.

CesiumAstro raised $270 million in a Series C investment round led by Trousdale Ventures. Participants included Toyota growth fund Woven Capital, Janus Henderson Group, Airbus Ventures, the Development Bank of Japan, MESH Ventures and NewSpace Capital.

In addition, the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s Make More in America initiative and JPMorgan provided CesiumAstro with $200 million in debt financing.

With the capital, CesiumAstro is establishing a 25,000 square meter headquarters and manufacturing facility in Bee Cave, Texas, a suburb of Austin.

“Our company is growing with four major locations and three business development and engineering locations around the world,” Shey Sabripour, CesiumAstro founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. “Our products are expanding in multiple types of commercial and defense missions.”

Full-Rate Production

CesiumAstro was founded in 2017 to produce and sell CesiumAstro software-defined phased-array communications components. In recent years, the company has extended its product line to include integrated phased-array communications payloads as well as Element, a multi-beam active phased-array satellite. With the latest financing, CesiumAstro will begin full-rate production of components and subsystems.

“Engineering is easy. Mass-manufacturing is way harder,” said Phillip Sarofim, Trousdale Ventures founder. “With this round, CesiumAstro goes from a low-rate innovator to a high-capacity industrial powerhouse.”

Proliferated LEO

Many of CesiumAstro’s customers are establishing proliferated low-Earth-orbit constellations, including the Space Force Space Development Agency.

“Prime contractors buy our phased-array-communication systems for their satellites,” Sabripour said. “We have direct government customers. And we will be proud to be part of the next generation of proliferated LEO, Golden Dome for America.”

The latest funding “reflects broad confidence in our execution across commercial and defense markets,” Ken Smith, CesiumAstro chief financial officer, said in a statement. “With the addition of significant non-dilutive EXIM financing, this funding both validates our progress and accelerates our next phase of growth.”

State Backing

In 2025, CesiumAstro won a Texas Space Commission grant with a maximum value of $10 million to build its headquarters and manufacturing facility. CesiumAstro is expected to invest more than $500 million and create more than 500 jobs in the state within five years, according to a Jan. 14 announcement from the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

“I congratulate CesiumAstro on this significant expansion in the Austin area which will create hundreds of new, high-tech jobs for hardworking Texans,” Abbott said in a statement.

Eight Elements

CesiumAstro raised $60 million in a 2022 Series B round and $65 million in a 2024 Series B+.

With that funding, the company was able to develop the Element satellite, slated to launch for the first time in October. Seven more Elements are scheduled to travel to orbit on SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare flights in the next several years.

Cars, Planes and Satellites

To date, CesiumAstro has focused primarily on space and aviation markets. But the company’s technology has applications in “land, air, sea and space,” Sabripour said.

“CesiumAstro is fundamentally redefining how we connect the world from space,” Will Fung, Woven Capital principal, said in a statement. “By moving
away from rigid, legacy hardware and toward a modular, software-defined approach, they’ve unlocked a level of flexibility the industry hasn’t seen before.”

With its “deep technical and industry expertise,” CesiumAstro has “a clear path to new applications like vehicles in the near future,” Fund added.