The space economy is showing no signs of slowing down.
The Space Economy Market Report 2026 by Research and Markets reported that the space economy market size has grown strongly in recent years. It is expected to grow from $431.09 billion in 2025 to $468.48 billion in 2026 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.7 percent.
According to the report, the growth in the forecast period can be attributed to growing adoption of reusable rockets, rising demand for space-based internet services, increasing private sector participation, commercial space tourism activities, and growing investment in deep space missions. Major trends in the forecast period include technology advancements in satellite systems, innovations in reusable launch technologies, developments in space robotics, research and development in propulsion systems, and advancements in in-orbit servicing technologies.
Leading companies in the space economy market, per the report, are focusing on developing advanced space capabilities, such as orbital manufacturing and re-entry testing, to support payload experimentation, materials testing, and in-space production.
NASA’s evolving Artemis strategy is also opening the door to a new commercial era on the Moon. A phased approach to building a lunar base was announced by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in March 2026. With the agency redirecting focus from Gateway in its current form toward lunar surface infrastructure, more demand is being created for technologies, services, and capabilities that leverage commercial partnerships.
Powering this momentum in the space sector is a new generation of commercial startups designing, building, and flight-testing breakthrough technologies that will enable sustained human presence in low-Earth orbit (LEO), on the Moon, and fuel deep-space missions. Here is a look at eight emerging startups.
1. STOKE SPACE
Year Founded: 2019
Location: Kent, WA
CEO: Andy Lapsa
Technology: Stoke Space Technologies is a rocket company developing Nova, a fully and rapidly reusable medium-lift launch vehicle. Nova’s fully reusable design changes the fundamentals of cost, availability, and reliability of launch. Its reusable upper stage features a liquid, regeneratively cooled metallic re-entry heat shield with an integrated modular liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket engine. It is robust, resilient to damage, and operates with passive failure modes. Designed for minimal refurbishment between flights, the second stage unlocks rapid turnaround and offers direct access to high-energy orbits, unlimited engine restarts, and return from orbit to launch site with powered vertical landings. The company uses steel rather than carbon composite to give Nova’s tanks exceptional thermal properties, strength, and ductility. Steel tanks are better able to endure the multiple cycles of pressurization, high and low temperature cycles, and mechanical stresses of rapid reusability. Stoke’s technology development has been funded by the U.S. Space Force, DIU, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and other government and private partners. It recently announced a Series D financing round of $860 million.
2. IMPULSE SPACE
Year Founded: 2021
Location: Redondo Beach, CA
CEO: Tom Mueller
Technology: This in-space mobility infrastructure company builds high-thrust orbital transfer vehicles that shorten LEO-to-GEO delivery times from months to hours. NASA has selected Impulse Space to produce two orbital transfer vehicle service studies that explore lower-cost ways to deliver spacecraft to important but hard-to-reach destinations in space. Impulse’s studies will focus on how its Mira and Helios vehicles could meet NASA’s objectives to more easily and cost-effectively reach these difficult-to-access orbits. Mira is a high-thrust, highly maneuverable spacecraft for payload hosting and deployment. It is capable of operating in LEO, GEO, cislunar space, and beyond. Mira has flown two successful missions already, demonstrating its ability to host or deploy small payloads anywhere within a given orbit. Helios is a high-energy kick stage built to rapidly deliver payloads to LEO, GEO, and beyond. It can lift over 5 tons from LEO to GEO in less than 24 hours. By pairing a standard medium-lift rocket with access to higher-energy orbits, Helios offers significant cost savings. The company raised $300 million in a Series C funding round in June 2025.
3. SOPHIA SPACE
Year Founded: 2023
Location: Pasadena, CA
CEO: Robert DeMillo
Technology: Co-founded by former NASA/JPL Fellow Dr. Leon Alkalai, Sophia Space is building the future of orbital computing and in-space data centers. Its modular TILE (Thermal-Integrated LEO Edge) technology enables in-situ data processing, AI acceleration, and edge computing for satellites, defense systems, and commercial space stations — reducing latency and delivering actionable insights where and when they are needed. Purpose-built for the orbital environment from the ground up, not adapted from terrestrial solutions. Each TILE has its own dedicated solar panel, providing continuous energy. The company’s technology is purpose-built for the extreme thermal, power, and radiation environments of space. By integrating NVIDIA’s Jetson Orin into its modular, hosted computing platforms, the company is enabling customers to run AI applications where lots of data is already generated: in orbit. The result is real-time processing, autonomous spacecraft operations, and faster decision-making. It has signed a commercial agreement with Kepler Communications Inc. to advance a comprehensive collaboration across orbital compute and connectivity. The company recently raised $10 million in seed funding to accelerate development of space-based edge computers and orbital data centers.
4. ZENO POWER
Year Founded: 2018
Location: Seattle, WA
CEO: Tyler Bernstein
Technology: Founded by students at Vanderbilt University, Zeno Power specializes in radioisotope power systems (nuclear batteries). Designed for the modern space era, Zeno’s nuclear batteries provide the heat and electricity needed to survive extreme cold and darkness, enabling long-duration missions through the lunar night, in permanently shadowed regions, on Mars, and across deep space. Today, lunar missions can survive for only weeks — they freeze to death during the two-week lunar night, when temperatures drop as low as -250 °C. Zeno’s nuclear batteries change that, delivering steady heat and power to keep missions running for years. Zeno’s nuclear batteries use radioactive isotopes such as strontium-90 and americium-241 as fuel. As these materials naturally decay, they emit heat that can be used directly or converted into electricity using thermoelectric generators or a Stirling engine. Zeno has secured over $60 million in contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA to develop nuclear batteries for demanding maritime and space applications, such as seabed infrastructure, highly maneuverable satellites, and lunar landers. In May 2025, it raised a $50 million Series B funding round.
5. XONA SPACE
Year Founded: 2019
Location: Burlingame, CA
CEO: Brian Manning
Technology: Xona Space offers advanced positioning, navigation, and timing infrastructure in LEO, broadcasting an entirely new signal that works everywhere. Broadcasting time with nanosecond-accuracy from LEO, its Pulsar constellation provides a next-era alternative to vulnerable GNSS-based systems. Pulsar satellites are a new class of navigation spacecraft designed to deliver precise, high-power, and resilient positioning and timing at constellation scale. With built-in authentication, secure signals, and up to 100x received power of legacy GNSS, Pulsar ensures reliable reception even in low-rise buildings and urban environments. Over the past several years, the company has moved from theory to real capability in space, launching the first private navigation satellite in history, receiving the first commercial FCC license to broadcast navigation signals, and demonstrating powerful satellite navigation signals transmitted from space, all without causing interference to existing services. In 2025, it successfully broadcast the first fully authenticated satellite navigation signal, achieving the highest positioning accuracy ever recorded from orbit in the process. In March 2026, it announced a $170 million Series C round to accelerate the deployment of Xona’s Pulsar constellation and scale satellite production.
6. INTERLUNE
Year Founded: 2020
Location: Seattle, WA
CEO: Rob Meyerson
Technology: Interlune is a lunar resource extraction startup aiming to harvest Helium-3. It has developed patent-pending technology that extracts materials from the lunar soil, or regolith, using the smallest, most energy-efficient machinery. In time, Interlune will harvest other resources such as industrial metals, rare Earth elements, and water to support a long-term presence on the Moon and a robust in-space economy. The company’s core intellectual property includes novel technologies for the excavation and processing of industrial quantities of lunar soil, or regolith, to extract Helium-3 and other resources. Its lunar harvester is smaller, lighter, and requires less power, making it less expensive to transport to the Moon and operate once it’s there. Helium-3 is extremely scarce on Earth but abundant on the Moon. Currently, there is tremendous demand for the isotope, primarily driven by the quantum computing industry. Other applications include weapons detection, medical imaging, and fusion energy. Interlune has raised $18 million to date and secured more than half a billion dollars in Helium-3 purchase orders and government contracts.
7. AGILE SPACE
Year Founded: 2009
Location: Durango, CO
CEO: Chris Pearson
Technology: Agile Space is an innovator of chemical inspace chemical propulsion systems operating on Hydrazine and Hydrazine-based constituents. The company’s thrusters and rocket engines are designed, 3D printed, and hotfired all under one roof, rapidly changing the landscape of the in-space propulsion market. Its robust in-house manufacturing facilities are equipped with both additive and subtractive manufacturing equipment enabling Agile to streamline and quality check every step of the production process. The company’s focus on rigorous testing and rapid iteration has positioned it to supply at scale as satellite constellations, lunar missions, and national security programs continue to expand. The Exploration Company (TEC) has contracted Agile to deliver flight thrusters for Nyx, a European modular space capsule that will dock with the ISS targeting 2028. The thrusters will be integrated into TEC’s Nyx vehicle, a modular and reusable capsule developed to support a variety of orbital missions, including cargo transport to LEO, and a rendezvous docking to the ISS. In February 2026, the company announced a $17 million Series A equity financing round.
8. STARCLOUD
Year Founded: 2024
Location: Redmond, VA
CEO: Philip Johnston
Technology: Y-Combinator-backed startup Starcloud is building data centers in space, initially to provide GPU compute to other satellites, and later to address the rapidly growing demand for energy caused by the deployment of AI. Falling launch costs give Starcloud access to abundant energy, radiative cooling, and the ability to rapidly scale in space. In November 2025, Starcloud launched its first satellite, Starcloud-1, to space. This has an Nvidia H100, which is 100x more powerful GPU than has ever been operated in space before. With this, they became the first entity to train an LLM in space and the first to run a version of Gemini in space. Starcloud will soon also run high-powered inference on Capella SAR data on orbit for the first time. The company is launching its second satellite in October 2026, which will have 100x the power generation of the first and generate more cash than it costs to build and launch. In March 2026, Starcloud raised a $170M Series A, becoming the fastest unicorn in YC history.
This article was written by Chitra Sethi, Editorial Director, SAE Media Group.
