Japan's iSpace raises $46m Series C

SBI Investment, Innovation Engine, Aizawa Asset Management, Aizawa Investments, and HiJoJo Partners also participated. It follows a JPY 3 billion Series B led by Incubate Fund last year and brings total funding to date to JPY21.3 billion.

The fresh capital will be applied to iSpace’s second lunar mission, which is planned to launch in 2023, as well as to increase the size of its lunar lander for its third mission, which is planned to launch in 2024. The lander for the third mission is currently being developed in the US, and a flight module is in the final assembly stages in Germany. The first mission has been delayed from 2020 to 2022.

ISpace builds small commercial lunar landers, with a view to providing a high-frequency, low-cost delivery service to the moon for private sector companies. It has also launched a lunar data business to support lunar market entry. The team numbers more than 150, with a presence across Japan, Europe, and the US.

On its first mission, iSpace’s lander will deliver payloads for the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and three companies that received awards as part of the Canadian Space Agency’s Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program. The lander will launch from the US on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The company is also part of a team led by Draper, a US space tech business with a heritage that traces back to the Apollo moon landings. This group of companies was selected by NASA to compete in its commercial lunar payload services program.

Separately, iSpace has been awarded contracts to collect and transfer ownership of lunar regolith to NASA, and its subsidiary iSpace EU was invited to join the science team for Prospect, a European Space Agency program seeking to extract water on the moon.

ISpace was founded in 2010 but did not raise its approximately $90 million Series A until late 2017, which was led by Japanese government start-up investor INCJ. It was touted at the time as the largest Series A ever raised in Japan.

Previous backers include Sparx Group, Real Tech Fund, and Development Bank of Japan. There has also been significant corporate support from the likes of Japan Airlines, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Konica Minolta, Suzuki Motor, Dentsu, Shimizu Corporation, and Toppan Printing.

“We are very grateful to our investors for supporting ispace to develop a high-frequency lunar transportation platform,” Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of iSpace, said in a statement.

“We are also honored that our investors share our vision to develop a lunar ecosystem that contributes to a more sustainable world. There is an increasing number of stakeholders entering this ecosystem from the development and investment side.”

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Japan
• Incubate Fund
• SBI Holdings
• space