Rocket launch site booked: Reflex Aerospace

Landshut/Berlin/Munich — Just in time for the company’s second anni­ver­sary, Reflex Aero­space is acce­le­ra­ting its course towards the first commer­cial space mission: The Berlin and Munich-based space start-up has booked a perma­nent rocket launch site for its demo satel­lite. The launch will take place in the fall of 2024 on a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX. The goal of the mission is to vali­date new tech­no­lo­gies in space for the first time. The demo satel­lite, which weighs appro­xi­m­ately 120 kilo­grams, is curr­ently under deve­lo­p­ment and will be assem­bled in Munich. The ‘micro factory’ there for the produc­tion of custo­­mer-speci­­fic satel­li­tes will open later this year.

These steps are supported by an expan­sion of the so-called seed finan­cing by a further 1.75 million euros (to a total of almost 9 million euros). In addi­tion to increa­ses from exis­ting inves­tors, Bayern Kapi­tal has joined the group of share­hol­ders through its EFRE Bayern inno­va­tion fund. As one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and active venture and growth inves­tors in the German high-tech finan­cing land­scape, Bayern Kapi­tal will use the invest­ment to finance, among other things, the estab­lish­ment of the first Micro Factory near Munich. Driven by expec­ted commer­cial order intake, seed funding is expec­ted to increase further during the year. In addi­tion, the Star­burst Acce­le­ra­tor — one of the most renow­ned Euro­pean acce­le­ra­tors for aero­space start-ups — will be on board in the future to support the deve­lo­p­ment of the inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness as Reflex Aerospace’s part­ner, espe­ci­ally in the USA as well as in France.

Walter Ball­hei­mer, CEO of Reflex Aero­space, welco­mes the current deve­lo­p­ment: “As a new space start-up, we are natu­rally eager to demons­trate the perfor­mance of our tech­no­lo­gies directly in space. We are ther­e­fore very plea­sed that this mile­stone is within reach with our first perma­nent rocket launch site. The increase in our finan­cing confirms the confi­dence of our inves­tors in this goal. With this tail­wind, we are driving forward the cons­truc­tion of our first Micro Factory, which we will open in Munich in the second half of 2023. In addi­tion, we are fully on track to nearly double our work­force across all sites to around 50 employees in 2023.”

Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, adds: “We are very plea­sed to have Reflex Aero­space as another port­fo­lio company in the aero­space sector — in the field of “New Space” we are among the inves­tors from the very begin­ning and have alre­ady inves­ted in nume­rous exci­ting compa­nies such as Isar Aero­space, Quan­tum Systems and Orora­Tech. Reflex Aero­space has a promi­sing busi­ness model, and we are happy to support its further development.”

About Reflex Aerospace

Reflex Aero­space was foun­ded in 2021. The Berlin and Munich-based NewSpace start-up aims to moder­nize the market with high-perfor­­mance satel­li­tes tail­o­red to indi­vi­dual requi­re­ments. Through soft­­ware-based and secu­rity-opti­­mi­­zed product archi­tec­tures as well as custo­­mer-orien­­ted service offe­rings, the company meets the needs of its custo­mers signi­fi­cantly faster, chea­per and more flexi­bly than estab­lished and other NewSpace manu­fac­tu­r­ers. Toge­ther with its part­ner compa­nies Myna­ric, Isar Aero­space and SES, Reflex Aero­space is also a share­hol­der in the UNIO joint venture, which aims to estab­lish a Euro­pean satel­lite constel­la­tion for broad­band Inter­net. www.reflexaerospace.com

About Bayern Kapital

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).

Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 companies.

Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in at an early stage include EOS (today the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plas­tics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scom­pler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion, tado and many more.
www.bayernkapital.de