The Exploration Company raises $450m

Hélène Huby, a 48-year-old French entrepreneur, has founded The Exploration Company, a private Franco-German start-up specialising in space transport. The company positions itself as a challenger to Elon Musk's SpaceX.

The Exploration Company has raised $450 million in Series C funding, co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico, and the Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT. This brings the company's total funding to approximately $680 million. The funding will be used to advance its reusable space transportation systems and expand its operations.

The company is developing reusable spacecraft and propulsion systems designed to transport cargo between Earth and orbit. Its near-term focus is on Nyx, a reusable space capsule designed to transport cargo to current and future space stations and return it safely to Earth, with the potential to carry crew at a later stage.

Brief written by urgent.news from Le Monde Economie, Tech.eu — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.