Jane Edwards
Venus Aerospace has secured $20 million in a round of Series A financing led by Prime Movers Lab and will use the capital to mature its rocket engine, aircraft shape and cooling technology for its hypersonic aircraft.
Draper Associates, Boost, Cantos, Saturn 5, Seraph Group, Tamarack Global and The Helm also participated in the funding round, bringing Venus’ total financing to $33 million, Venus said Tuesday.
Venus Aerospace is developing a Mach 9 hypersonic aircraft that can enable passengers to travel around the world in an hour. The Houston-based startup received government contracts in the past year, developed its tech demonstration engine and performed experiments at propulsion test facilities and hypersonic wind tunnels in the U.S.
“We will use this round of funding to get into flight testing and engine testing at Spaceport Houston,” said Andrew Duggleby, co-founder and chief technology officer of Venus.
Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus, said the company used its initial funding to increase its workforce from three to 40 employees and will use the latest round to meet technical milestones, support recruitment efforts and scale the company as it continues engineering work on its spaceplane.
Brandon Simmons, general partner at Prime Movers Lab, said the U.S. is in the middle of the global hypersonic technology race and the breakthroughs being developed by the Venus Aerospace team have defense and civilian applications.
Join ExecutiveBiz Events for the Hypersonics Forum this spring to hear from federal and industry leaders as they discuss the role of public-private partnerships in hypersonics development in relation to national security, military capabilities and strategic competition in today’s evolving threat landscape.
