AstroForge
Assembly Line
Asteroid Mining Startup AstroForge Raises $40 Million
Asteroid mining startup AstroForge has raised $40 million as the company races the clock to get its next mission ready for launch. AstroForge that it raised the Series A round led by Nova Threshold, bringing the total raised by the Southern California startup to $55 million. Others participating in the round include funds 776, Initialized, Caladan, YC and Uncorrelated Ventures as well as individual investor Jed McCaleb, the billionaire who also founded commercial space station company Vast.
Matt Gialich, co-founder and chief executive of AstroForge, said in an interview that the funds will support the company’s third mission, called Vestri. The spacecraft will launch as a rideshare payload on the IM-3 lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines in late 2025 and travel to an undisclosed asteroid. The 200-kilogram spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid and touch down on its surface to characterize it, including quantifying what precious metals could be extracted from it. The funds will also allow AstroForge to refine technologies for refining asteroid materials in deep space. “But the primary thing it gets us is mission three,” he said.