Investors have poured more money into space and satellite startups in 2026 than in any previous year, with four months still remaining on the calendar. According to Crunchbase News, global funding across seed-through-growth stages has reached $20.3 billion so far this year, surpassing every prior annual total.
Independent data backs up the scale of the shift. PitchBook’s 2026 Vertical Snapshot found that venture-backed space companies raised $11.3 billion across 244 deals in just the first six months of the year, already exceeding the $10.1 billion invested across 433 deals in all of 2025.
Fewer, much bigger deals
The surge is not being driven by more startups getting funded. Deal counts have stayed relatively flat even as total dollars invested has climbed sharply, a pattern PitchBook attributes to a small number of very large late-stage rounds, often called megarounds.
The median space tech venture round size more than doubled in the first half of 2026, rising to $14.5 million from $7 million a year earlier. Late-stage and growth deals accounted for 87.4% of all capital deployed in the sector, according to PitchBook, while seed-stage funding’s share fell to roughly 1.5%, the lowest on record.
Round counts have been flatter even as total dollar investment has risen sharply, indicating funding is concentrated in fewer, much larger ‘megarounds.’
Who is capturing the money
Reusable-rocket developer Stoke Space extended its Series D to a total of $860 million in 2026, while Sierra Space raised $550 million in a round led by LuminArx Capital Management. Axiom Space, which develops commercial space stations, closed $350 million in February, and satellite-communications software firm Aalyria raised $100 million in a Series B round.
By category, PitchBook found commercial launch companies raised about $3 billion in the first half of 2026, satellite companies raised $2.8 billion, and space infrastructure firms raised $1.2 billion.
The biggest single event of the year, however, came from SpaceX, which completed what Crunchbase described as a record-breaking IPO before announcing plans to acquire AI coding startup Anysphere, the parent company of Cursor, for $60 billion in an all-stock deal. Crunchbase called it one of the largest acquisitions of a venture-backed startup in recent years.
A sharp turnaround from a two-year slump
The current boom follows a period of contraction. Space tech funding peaked at roughly $12.1 billion to $12.3 billion in 2021 before declining for two consecutive years. A rebound began in 2024 and accelerated through 2025, when Crunchbase’s space tech and satellite categories recorded over $12 billion in funding for the full year, before this year’s figures pulled further ahead.
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