space-startup
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Stef Crum
Stef Crum is the CEO and co-founder of Reditus Space, an Atlanta aerospace startup building reusable spacecraft that return payloads from orbit so companies can manufacture in microgravity. A Georgia Tech PhD in space systems engineering who worked on orbital operations and reentry with NASA and the Space Force, Crum started Reditus with classmate Will Sherman after Georgia Tech's Create-X program, went through Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch, raised a $7.1 million seed round, and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Transportation and Aerospace list in 2026. His pitch is blunt: the innovation isn't getting to orbit, it's coming back.
Spaceium Inc.
Spaceium is a Y Combinator (S24) aerospace startup building unmanned refueling and servicing stations in orbit - what its founders call service stations along a 'space superhighway.' Its proprietary cryogenic storage system holds multiple metric tons of fuel for up to a decade in orbit without boil-off, and its high-precision robotic arm transfers propellant and performs repairs. The goal is to let spacecraft top up in space instead of carrying all their fuel from launch, extending missions and lowering costs for satellites, orbital transfer vehicles, and eventual Moon and Mars missions.
Luke Fischer
Luke Fischer is the co-founder and CEO of SkyFi, an Austin-based Earth intelligence platform that lets businesses and governments order satellite imagery and analytics on demand, the way you'd hail an Uber. A former U.S. Army Special Operations aviator with 16 years on active duty, Fischer went on to lead flight operations at Uber and government operations at Joby Aviation before becoming an entrepreneur-in-residence at Shield Capital. He teamed up with investor Bill Perkins, who was frustrated that buying satellite imagery could take three to six months, and together they built a marketplace connecting more than 50 imagery providers. In January 2026 SkyFi raised an oversubscribed $12.7 million Series A to push deeper into AI-driven analytics.
Bridgit Mendler
Bridgit Mendler is the co-founder and CEO of Northwood Space, an El Segundo startup mass-producing phased-array ground stations to move data between satellites and Earth. A former Disney Channel lead (Teddy Duncan on Good Luck Charlie) and platinum-selling pop singer, she pivoted through the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Law School into deep-tech, and by early 2026 had raised more than $100 million and won a $49.8M U.S. Space Force contract to modernize the Satellite Control Network.
Jacob Rodriguez
Jacob Rodriguez is the founder and CEO of Oligo Space, a Hawthorne, California aerospace startup automating the design and manufacturing of large multi-orbit satellites. A first-generation college student who won a full scholarship to MIT and interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he left school early as a 2024 Thiel Fellow to build a manufacturing-in-the-loop foundation model for spacecraft production. Oligo plans to fly its first satellite, Chimera-1, on SpaceX's Transporter-15 mission in 2026.
Will Bruey
Will Bruey is the co-founder and CEO of Varda Space Industries, a company building autonomous capsules that manufacture pharmaceuticals in orbit and then fly them back to Earth. A former SpaceX avionics engineer who flew Dragon on eight missions to the International Space Station, Bruey now runs the first company to manufacture a drug in space and successfully return it. His pitch is deliberately unglamorous: make space manufacturing routine enough to be boring, then build the supply chain that follows.
Saurav Shroff
Saurav Shroff is the co-founder and CEO of Starpath, a Hawthorne, California startup building industrial-scale infrastructure to mine and refine rocket propellant on the Moon and Mars. A UC Berkeley engineering grad and former SpaceX avionics engineer, he started Starpath in mid-2022 with the conviction that mining lunar water ice into liquid oxygen could cut the cost of deep-space transport by orders of magnitude. Starpath raised a $12M seed round in 2024, won NASA Break the Ice prize money, and in 2025 launched 'Starlight' space-rated solar panels priced roughly 90% below industry norms. Shroff has testified before Congress on space resource mining and frames his ambition bluntly: build the supply chain for a million-person city on Mars.
Brian Manning
Brian Manning is the co-founder and CEO of Xona Space Systems, a Burlingame, California startup building Pulsar, a commercial alternative to GPS broadcast from a planned 258-satellite constellation in low-Earth orbit. A former SpaceX engineer who worked on the Falcon 9 thrust structure, Manning reunited eight Stanford aerospace graduates over pizza and beer in 2019 to chase a question nobody had answered: why has no one built a private, encrypted, centimeter-accurate navigation network? In 2022 Xona launched Huginn, the first commercial satellite navigation mission in orbit, and in March 2026 closed an oversubscribed $170 million Series C to scale manufacturing and begin deploying production satellites.
John Gedmark
John Gedmark is the CEO and Co-founder of Astranis Space Technologies, a San Francisco-based aerospace company building next-generation geostationary satellites. He previously helped shape the commercial space industry as co-founder and executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, where he influenced President Obama's 2010 decision to use commercial space transportation for NASA missions - a shift worth over $10 billion to the industry. At Astranis, he has led the company from a Y Combinator startup to a $2.8 billion valuation with a $1+ billion backlog, operating a fleet of MicroGEO satellites that bring dedicated broadband to underserved regions across Alaska, the Philippines, Mexico, and beyond.