K2 Space closes $500M round to bulk up defense satellite production
K2 Space announced a $500 million Series D on July 30, bringing its valuation to $6.8 billion as the satellite manufacturer scales production capacity for military and commercial orders that has more than doubled in seven months.
Kleiner Perkins and ICONIQ led the round, joined by CapitalG, Lightspeed, Altimeter, Spark Capital, Sands Capital, ARK Invest, T. Rowe Price and existing investors. The company has now raised over $1 billion in total capital and holds more than $1 billion in signed government and commercial contracts.
Co-founder and CEO Karan Kunjur said the capital will fund a production ramp toward building as many as 100 large spacecraft per year. The four-year-old Torrance, California manufacturer is pursuing a strategy that runs counter to industry trends — betting that cheaper launch costs and larger rockets will make satellite mass less of a constraint. While competitors have focused on miniaturization, K2 is building bigger buses for power-hungry defense and intelligence payloads that require substantial on-orbit computing and sensing capabilities.
The February 2026 Series C valued the startup at $3 billion and raised $250 million. Since then, the company has doubled its government and commercial backlog to more than $1 billion, putting it in direct competition with established military satellite prime contractors. K2 executives recently hosted Lt. Gen. Dennis Bythewood, commander of U.S. Space Forces-Space, at the company’s Torrance production facility.
The rapid fundraising and valuation growth signal strong investor appetite for defense-oriented satellite production capacity as the Pentagon accelerates its space-based sensing and data transport architectures.
