Relativity Space Soars, Reportedly Landing a $500M Investment

Rachel Uranga

Rachel Uranga is dot.LA's Managing Editor, News. She is a former Mexico-based market correspondent at Reuters and has worked for several Southern California news outlets, including the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News. She has covered everything from IPOs to immigration. Uranga is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and California State University Northridge. A Los Angeles native, she lives with her husband, son and their felines.

Relativity Space Soars, Reportedly Landing a $500M Investment

Relativity Space raised $500 million to help it build its 3D rocket ships in a round led by Tiger Global Management, CNBC reported on Tuesday.

The raise, one of the largest this year for a Los Angeles startup, would reportedly value the company at $3.2 billion and put the region at the center of a new wave of high-value space companies.

Earlier this year, Hawthorne-headquartered SpaceX raised $1.9 billion at a reported $46 billion valuation.

Neither Relativity nor Tiger Global could be reached for comment.

Relativity was created by two twenty-somethings and seeks to revolutionize spaceflight by building the world's first 3D-printed rocket with its first iteration called Terran 1. The process is cheaper than traditional manufacturing and CEO and co-founder Tim Ellis, an alum of the Jeff Bezos-led space company Blue Origin, aims to eventually automate rocket-making on Mars.

Relativity has picked up steam recently landing a contract with Lockheed Martin to build 3D projectiles for an experimental NASA mission to test cryogenic fluid management capabilities, key to establishing a sustainable presence on the moon and sending crewed missions to Mars. And in June it struck a deal with the U.S. Air Force's 30th Space Wing to develop rocket launch facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Last year the company closed a $140 million Series C round led by Bond and Tribe Capital in October. Relativity is also backed by investors Playground Global, Y Combinator, Social Capital, and Mark Cuban.

Those funds helped build a new headquarters in Long Beach where the company is likely to expand the development of the Terran 1. It comes months after co-founder Jordan Noone resigned as chief technology officer and became an executive advisor in what he said was preparation for starting another venture.

Editor's note: dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff is an investor in Relativity Space.

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Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever
Photo by Samson Amore

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Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

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Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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