Photo: Apex

A new spacecraft manufacturer, Apex, emerged from stealth on Monday with more than $7.5 million in funding.  Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from XYZ, J2, Lux Capital, and Village Global.

The company was founded by Ian Cinnamon and Max Benassi. Cinnamon, the CEO, previously Synapse, which uses AI technology for security checkpoints, and was acquired by Palantir. Benassi, the CTO, previously scaled aerospace manufacturing at SpaceX and was director of engineering at Astra.

Cinnamon and Benassi said in a blog post that the company is working in line with industry trends to manufacture spacecraft at scale, “removing satellite buses as a bottleneck from the process of our society’s expansion to space.” 

The company offers a 103 kg satellite bus built for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) called Aries, which can hold a customer payload as large as 94 kg. Apex said Aries can serve a wide variety of missions, ranging from earth imaging to communications. The Aries platform is available off the shelf or can be configured to meet specific mission requirements.

According to Apex’s website, the bus is currently sold out for 2023.