Turning Pain Into Gain: How CoFoundersLab Is Helping Recently Laid Off Workers Become Entrepreneurs

🔦 Spotlight

Hello, LA.

Most companies built around solar energy are trying to capture more sunlight.

Reflect Orbital wants to move it.

The Hawthorne-based startup is developing satellites equipped with large reflectors that could redirect sunlight from orbit to specific locations on Earth after sunset. The idea sounds borrowed from science fiction, but Reflect Orbital is getting closer to testing whether it can work at commercial scale.

This week, the company announced $73.5M in new funding, bringing its total raised to more than $100M. Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital and Starship Ventures participated alongside new backers including Buckley Ventures, Convective Capital, The Uncommon Group and Salesforce Ventures.

The funding will support Reflect Orbital’s first satellite launches, continued development of its reflector technology and new commercial partnerships across the energy and lighting industries.

The company’s premise begins with a familiar limitation: Solar panels stop producing energy when the sun disappears below the horizon, often just as electricity demand is rising.

Reflect Orbital wants to extend that window.

Its planned satellites would remain in sunlight while orbiting Earth, then angle their reflectors toward selected areas on the ground. Solar farms could potentially generate electricity beyond daylight hours without acquiring more land or replacing their existing infrastructure.

The same technology could eventually illuminate disaster zones for search-and-rescue teams, help construction crews work more safely at night and provide light in places without reliable electrical infrastructure.

That is a considerable expansion from where the company stood two years ago.

Reflect Orbital raised a $6.5M seed round in 2024 to develop its production vehicles and grow its Hawthorne team. It followed that with a $20M Series A led by Lux Capital in May 2025.

Now, the company is preparing to leave the warehouse and test its technology where it was designed to operate.

Reflect Orbital has received Federal Communications Commission approval for its first demonstration mission, Eärendil-1, which is expected to launch in the second quarter of 2027. The satellite will allow the company to study how its reflector deploys and performs in low Earth orbit while gathering data that could shape future versions of the system. Reflect Orbital has also secured additional launch opportunities for 2027, including two dedicated missions with Skyroot Aerospace.

Building the satellites presents its own unusual manufacturing challenge. According to the company, its team produces reflector material 28 times thinner than a human hair, folds individual sections into packages roughly the size of a shoebox and assembles satellites containing approximately 12,000 parts.

In other words, delivering sunlight after dark requires some very careful folding.

The concept has naturally prompted questions from astronomers and dark-sky advocates about light pollution and potential interference with scientific observations. Reflect Orbital says it is designing the service around predictability, transparency and control, including limiting reflections to defined locations and short periods, publishing satellite positions in advance and avoiding observatories and other protected sites.

The demonstration mission is expected to produce illumination comparable to a full moon for no more than five minutes during the two hours following local sunset. Reflect Orbital has also said it will collect data, invite outside evaluation and use the results to refine both its technology and safeguards before attempting to scale.

That process will matter because Reflect Orbital is not simply building another satellite. It is proposing a new kind of infrastructure, one that could change when and where sunlight becomes available.

The company still has significant technical and regulatory work ahead. But it has already moved from an unconventional idea to more than $100M in funding, an approved demonstration mission and multiple launch opportunities.

The next step is proving that its technology can deliver light precisely, reliably and responsibly from hundreds of miles above Earth.

If it succeeds, the sun may no longer disappear from the energy grid when it drops below the horizon.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

🤝 Venture Deals

Download the dot.LA App

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday, Los Angeles.

Nine months ago, Northwood Space was operating from a 35,000-square-foot facility in Torrance. Today, it occupies a factory more than five times the size, has deployed six ground sites across two continents and is reportedly worth $2B.

Aerospace companies are not generally known for moving this quickly.

When dot.LA last covered Northwood, the company had just raised a $100M Series B and secured a nearly $50M contract with the U.S. Space Force. The deal established Northwood as one of the more closely watched companies working on the essential infrastructure that keeps satellites connected to Earth.

Less than a year later, Northwood is operating at a considerably different scale.

The company announced this week that it raised a $375M Series C co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and DFJ Growth, with additional investment from Washington Harbour Partners, Alpine Space Ventures, StepStone, In-Q-Tel and others. The round values Northwood at a reported $2B. A separate credit facility from HSBC Innovation Banking will provide additional support for working capital and network expansion.

The financing is notable. What Northwood accomplished between rounds is the more interesting part.

Since January, the company has deployed six ground sites across two continents, demonstrated communication with a government satellite in geosynchronous orbit and introduced a high-throughput antenna system for moving larger volumes of data. It also opened a 185,000-square-foot headquarters and factory in Torrance, expanding its manufacturing footprint more than fivefold.

Northwood now employs more than 140 people and plans to add 400 jobs across Torrance and Washington, D.C., over the next three years.

The company builds the infrastructure that allows satellites to exchange commands and data with operators on Earth. Rather than requiring every satellite company to develop its own ground stations, Northwood is creating a shared network that commercial operators and government agencies can access as needed.

Think cloud infrastructure, except the servers are antennas and adding capacity requires considerably more than clicking a button.

That distinction matters. Software companies can often scale by purchasing additional computing power. Northwood must manufacture physical systems, establish sites around the world and reliably serve customers operating across multiple orbits.

Its new Torrance factory is central to that plan. The facility is designed to produce hundreds of antennas each year, giving Northwood the manufacturing capacity to expand its network faster than traditional ground infrastructure can typically be built.

Demand is moving just as quickly. The number of active satellites worldwide grew from roughly 3,000 in 2020 to more than 14,000 by the end of 2025. Every one of them eventually needs to send information somewhere, and existing ground networks were not designed for the volume of missions now entering orbit.

Northwood’s previous funding helped prove it could build the technology and win serious customers. This round is about turning that early progress into global infrastructure.

The question is no longer whether Northwood can build a modern ground network. It is whether the company can make Torrance-built hardware the default connection layer for a rapidly expanding space economy.

With another $375M behind it, that test begins now.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

🤝 Venture Deals

Download the dot.LA App

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday, Los Angeles.

Anduril has built autonomous drones, underwater vehicles and fighter aircraft. Its newest product is considerably more familiar.

A laptop.

The Costa Mesa-based defense technology company announced this week that it is partnering with San Diego-based Qualcomm Technologies to launch BlueChip, a new line of computers designed in California and manufactured in the United States.

The first product will be a rugged laptop powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Series platform and built for customers in government, defense, public safety and other critical industries. Anduril has already produced working prototypes and plans to begin accepting orders in 2027.

At first glance, a laptop may seem like a modest addition to a company known for developing autonomous military systems. But BlueChip is less about entering the crowded consumer-electronics market and more about rebuilding the industrial foundation behind the machines Americans use every day.

The United States remains a leader in designing advanced technology, but much of the physical production required to turn those designs into finished computers has moved overseas. That includes not only semiconductor manufacturing, but also circuit boards, displays, batteries, enclosures and the network of specialized suppliers that connects them.

For most consumers, that dependency is largely invisible. For the government and military, it represents a potential vulnerability.

BlueChip is Anduril’s attempt to close that gap.

Components sourced from the United States and allied countries already account for more than 90% of the prototype laptop’s procurement cost. Circuit-board assembly is planned for Anduril’s Arsenal-1 facility in Ohio, while the company develops domestic production capabilities for enclosures, batteries and other hardware.

The goal is to gradually replace remaining foreign dependencies and create an end-to-end American computer supply chain that can support additional products beyond the first laptop.

That process requires more than moving an existing design into an American factory. Anduril is redesigning the computer around what domestic manufacturers can realistically produce at scale. The work includes selecting machinable American metals, adapting power systems to available battery technology and developing a bonding process for domestically made display glass.

In other words, Anduril is not simply assembling a laptop in America. It is working backward through the supply chain to make American assembly possible.

Qualcomm will supply the computing foundation. Its Snapdragon X platform will handle processing, graphics and on-device artificial intelligence, giving BlueChip users the ability to run certain AI models locally rather than sending sensitive information to the cloud.

That is particularly valuable for government and defense customers operating in secure environments, but it also reflects a broader shift in computing. As AI becomes embedded in everyday workflows, the location where information is processed may become nearly as important as the model doing the processing.

The partnership also reinforces Southern California’s growing role in the effort to rebuild American advanced manufacturing.

Anduril remains headquartered in Orange County, but its regional footprint is expanding. The company is investing $1B in a new campus spanning Long Beach and Lakewood that is expected to support approximately 5,500 jobs and include engineering, laboratory and prototype-manufacturing space.

Qualcomm, meanwhile, has spent decades building San Diego into a center for wireless technology and semiconductor design.

BlueChip brings those two Southern California strengths together: Anduril’s ability to move quickly from engineering concept to physical product and Qualcomm’s expertise in efficient, high-performance computing.

The first BlueChip laptop is not intended to compete for space in every backpack or coffee shop. Its early customers will likely be institutions that care deeply about security, reliability and control over their technology supply chains.

But the larger ambition reaches far beyond a single device.

If BlueChip succeeds, Anduril and Qualcomm will have created more than an American-made computer. They will have helped restore the suppliers, production knowledge and technical workforce required to build the next one.

For a company accustomed to tackling difficult national-security problems, the laptop may be one of Anduril’s most practical ideas yet.

Sometimes rebuilding an industry begins with reopening the machine.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

🤝 Venture Deals

Download the dot.LA App