Stoke Space plans more powerful rocket, raises $1 billion

WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - After closing a $1 billion funding round, U.S. launch startup Stoke Space intends to develop a larger rocket aimed at replenishing satellite constellations, CEO Andy Lapsa told Reuters. The company is reinforcing its fully reusable rocket approach as launch-services demand continues to climb.

The Series E, led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital and completed this month, values Stoke Space at about $10 billion, a person familiar with the matter said. Since the company was founded in 2020, it has raised $2.3 billion in total.

Lapsa said the new capital will accelerate work on the Nova Pathfinder rocket, which Stoke expects to introduce in 2027. The funding will also support the larger Nova Block 2, a vehicle that has been under development for more than a year, he added.

Pathfinder’s flight schedule is sold out “for the next couple years,” Lapsa said, while declining to give a launch count. Early customer conversations are already underway for Block 2, whose debut is targeted for 2029, he noted.

The global launch market has seen a surge in demand as companies move forward with services requiring larger satellite fleets. Key players such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Chinese launch providers are counting on reusable rockets to cut the cost of reaching orbit by tens of millions of dollars relative to conventional expendable vehicles.

In the U.S., only a handful of companies are pursuing fully reusable orbital launchers. SpaceX’s Starship is being developed for full reusability, while Rocket Lab’s forthcoming Neutron is designed to be mostly reusable.

Pathfinder, formerly Stoke’s flagship vehicle, is now positioned as an intermediate step toward Block 2. That larger rocket will be powered by 14 of Stoke’s Zenith engines — twice the number on Pathfinder — allowing it to deploy more satellites in a single mission, an important capability as operators look to refresh aging constellations, Lapsa explained.

“Customers have been moving toward larger and more numerous spacecraft, which is a key reason we decided to fully greenlight Block 2,” Lapsa said.

Stoke intends to keep the smaller Pathfinder operational even after Block 2 launches, using it for dedicated satellite missions or deployments of small-satellite batches.

In reusable mode, Pathfinder is designed to deliver 3 metric tons to low Earth orbit, compared with up to 7 metric tons in expendable configuration — a capacity that modestly exceeds Firefly Aerospace’s expendable Alpha but is under half that of SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9.

Block 2 is expected to carry up to 15 metric tons to low Earth orbit when recovered, or roughly 23 metric tons if flown expendably — approaching Falcon 9’s performance. The Falcon 9 is currently the world’s most used rocket and is slated to be succeeded by SpaceX’s considerably larger Starship.