Lockheed Martin Ventures, the aerospace giant’s investing arm, joined a funding round for Xona Space Systems, a San Mateo, Calif.-based startup building a low-earth orbit (LEO)navigation system.
First Spark Ventures led the round. Xona did not disclose the size of the funding round but said it has raised $25 million in venture capital so far.
Other new investors in the round included SRI Ventures, Velvet Sea Ventures, Gaingels, Airstream Venture Partners, and Space.VC. Existing investors Seraphim Space, Toyota Ventures, 1517 Fund, MaC Venture Capital and Stellar Ventures also participated.
Lockheed Doubles Down
Earlier this month, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) said it was doubling funding for Lockheed Martin Ventures to $400 million to advance “21st century technologies.”
“The success of our venture capital investments todate is a testament to our strategy and allows Lockheed Martin to continue to deliver innovative solutions across all domains,” said Jay Malave, chief financial officer of Lockheed Martin. “Doubling our ventures fund will allow us to increase the number of startup companies we can work with to advance 21st-century security technologies.”
With the doubled funding, the defense contractor’s venture arm also aims to double the number of portfolio investments, which could pose a challenge because of its elaborate vetting process. Last year, for example, it screened more than 1,000 startupsin diverse fields before placing about a dozen bets.
Besides Xona, Lockheed Martin Ventures has made four portfolio investments this year — Cloud NC, X-Bow Launch Systems, Slingshot Aerospace and Electra.aero. In the year to date, it has invested in 11 new companies and about 70 since its inception in 2007.
Focus on Navigation
Xona was co founded by CEO Brian Manning, a former SpaceX engineer, and three others — Tyler Reid, Bryan Chan and Adrien Perkins. The company is developing an LEO satellite navigation system, dubbed Pulsar, that can provide “resilient and trusted centimeter-level position anywhere on the globe.”
The California company completed its first demonstration mission, called Huginn, in May, and plans a second one, called Muninn, in 2023.The new capital is expected to accelerate Pulsar’s development and help build Xona’s new R&D and manufacturing facility in Burlingame, Calif. The R&D center will aid accelerated design cycles and prime Xona for production.
Over the past year, Xona has more than doubled headcount and launched its first orbital mission. It has also signed deals with major players across the GPS/GNSS ecosystem, such as Hexagon, NovAtel and Spirent Federal.
‘Apollo Moment’
Manning is a graduate of the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and received a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University. He later earned an MBA from London.
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After a stint at a Chicago company developing alternative-fuel internal combustion engines, Manning joined SpaceX. Manning served as an engineer on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 thrust structure, and found great inspiration in billionaire Elon Musk’s company.
“Being in that SpaceX environment felt like being in the Apollo days of NASA and gave me a glimpse of the incredible things people can do when they are inspired,” Manning once told a publication of his alma mater, MSOE. That experience pushed Manning to start Xonain a bid to “change the world.”
Manning believes several modern technologies, including autonomous cars, will need what Xona is building. “…our system is designed to enable, whether it means keeping a car in its lane in the middle of a snowstorm, or safely landing a drone on a hospital masked in fog, or simply providing small farmers a cost-effective precision agriculture solution,” he said. “Precise and reliable global navigation has potential to benefit an extremely wide range of markets.”
