Apex reaches billion-dollar valuation with Series D funding round

WASHINGTON — Satellite manufacturer Apex has raised $200 million in a new funding round that values the company at more than $1 billion.

Apex announced Sept. 12 that it raised $200 million in a Series D round led by Interlagos, a venture capital firm founded by former SpaceX employees. The new round values Apex at more than $1 billion, but the company did not provide a more specific valuation.

The Series D round comes less than five months after Apex raised another $200 million in a Series C round. Like that earlier round, Apex said the Series D was opportunistic, with investors approaching the company about providing more funding.

“We didn’t need the capital. We’re in a very strong position,” Ian Cinnamon, chief executive of Apex, said in an interview. Interlagos, an existing small investor in Apex, approached the company about a month ago about increasing its stake.

The value proposition that Interlagos offered, he said, was to “supercharge” opportunities to build commercial and defense satellite constellations with its money and expertise. “That is really what made us say yes, and it came together literally overnight.”

“Apex is accelerating one of the most important shifts in the space industry today by architecting a solution for customers building modern, proliferated constellations,” said Achal Upadhyaya, founder and chief executive of Interlagos, in a statement. “Apex’s focus on production rate and scale is critical for both national security missions and high-performance commercial constellations.”

Cinnamon noted the Series D round comes three years to the day after Apex was founded. That makes it one of the fastest space companies to become a “unicorn,” a term for companies with valuations of at least $1 billion.

Apex plans to use the funding to scale up production of its satellite bus lines. That includes leasing a second facility next to its existing Factory One building in Los Angeles. The new building, which Apex expects to move into next year, will more than double the company’s square footage.

The additional space will allow the company to increase its projected production rate by 50%, from 12 to 18 buses per month. The extra space will also be used for mission integration activities as well as building components needed for the satellites.

Apex is emphasizing vertical integration as key to scaling up satellite production. Cinnamon said the company started with plans to buy as many components from suppliers as it could. “As we’ve grown and are building more and more satellites, and the demand increases, what we’re realizing is, on the supply chain side, there’s a lot more components that we end up building ourselves.”

As part of moving “full speed ahead” on vertical integration, Apex announced it acquired Hall Effect thruster technology from Phase Four, a satellite propulsion manufacturer. That included both personnel and hardware from that company, also based in Southern California.

The acquisition, he said, brings that key technology in-house. “As we’ve been buying systems, having the expertise in the team to make sure those systems work really well and flawlessly eventually leads to a pathway where we can vertically integrate them.”

Cinnamon said the Golden Dome missile defense system is a “growing and major” opportunity for the company, but that there is strong interest from other commercial and government customers. The company offers three lines of satellite buses, with the latest, Comet, intended for customers deploying constellations.

Apex has disclosed few details about specific customers or numbers of satellites, but he said the company’s production capacity is sold out through this year and that it added more production slots next year to meet growing demand. “We have buses sold all the way through the end of ’27 and into ’28 as well.”

Apex has delivered “a bit over half a dozen” satellites to customers so far, he said. It also continues to operate its first satellite, dubbed “Call to Adventure,” launched 18 months ago.