Among the kindergarten set, Space Unicorn refers to a popular song about a celestial equine with marshmallow lasers.
In the less imaginative realm of venture funding, the term denotes a far less magical but much more visible creature: A space tech company with major funding and a valuation north of $1 billion.
These days, this more staid version of space unicorn is moving up the funding tallies at a faster-than-usual clip. More than two dozen companies in the sector have raised rounds of $100 million or more in the past year, per Crunchbase data.
Meanwhile, the biggest unicorn of all — 24-year-old SpaceX — is reportedly seeking a valuation of around $1.5 trillion for an anticipated IPO later this year, featuring rocketry and satellite technology that should make even marshmallow lasers look primitive.
The broad trend: Unlike most startup sectors, which have seen uneven rebounds after hitting a funding peak over four years ago, space tech is hitting fresh highs. Contributing factors include public market enthusiasm for the sector, increased appetite for defense-related investments, and of course advances driving cheaper, more scalable and more technologically sophisticated orbital operations.
The numbers: Venture funding to companies in Crunchbase space tech and satellite categories hit a high last year of over $12 billion. So far, 2026 is off to a brisk start as well, with more than $2 billion in reported investment.
While investment is way up, round counts have remained flatter, as charted below.
Noteworthy rounds
Megarounds have been stacking up over the past six months.
By far the biggest of these was Kent, Washington-based Stoke Space, a developer of reusable rockets. The company announced a Series D extension in October that brought the total round size to $860 million.
Houston-based Axiom Space, which is developing a successor to the International Space Station, was a more recent mega-fundraiser, closing on $350 million in new financing in February.
And in the satellite communications space, one of the larger financings came this week, as Google spinout Aalyria, a developer of software that configures communications satellites to meet demand, secured $100 million in Series B funding.
For a bigger-picture view, below we put together a list of eight significant space- and satellite technology-related financings of the past six months.
Exits and more
The IPO market has also been receptive to space tech of late, although companies haven’t always held on to early gains.
One exemplar of this pattern is Firefly Aerospace, a provider of launch, land and in-space services for national security and commercial customers, that went public in August. Shares of the Cedar Park, Texas-based company soared higher in initial trading but have subsequently shed about half their value.
Voyager Technologies, a Denver-based defense and space tech startup that went public in June, is also down from its initial trading price. On the flip side, Karman Space & Defense, which went public early last year, is on a tear and was recently valued over $11 billion.
Meanwhile, it’s still early innings for space tech company York Space Systems, which went public just four weeks ago.
Heating up
Overall, in recent quarters space and satellite tech are looking like a sector in vogue. With large financings, regular IPO activity and a giant SpaceX offering on the horizon, we’re not seeing clear signs of a slowdown ahead for the space unicorn crowd.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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