Northwood Space, the Torrance, California company that builds ground stations for communicating with satellites, announced on 2 November 2026 that it has raised $375m in Series C equity funding. The round comes less than a year after the company’s $100m Series B in January 2026.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and DFJ Growth co-led the round. Alpine Space Ventures, Washington Harbour Partners, Stepstone Activate and In-Q-Tel also took part, along with other investors. Washington Harbour Partners led the Series B, and Washington Technology reported that it made what Northwood calls a “substantial follow-on investment”. Separately, the company has a multi-year credit facility from HSBC Innovation Banking to pay for working capital and network expansion.
Northwood did not disclose a valuation in its statement. Via Satellite reported that the round values the company at $2bn.
What the money is for
The company said in a statement that it will use the funding to deliver faster on existing contracts, hire staff and build out its global ground network for commercial, US government and allied missions. Northwood has more than 140 employees. It plans to add 400 jobs in Torrance and Washington, DC over three years, in RF engineering, manufacturing, software and site operations.
Since the Series B, Northwood says it has deployed six sites on two continents that can work with satellites in more than one orbit. It has also launched a high-throughput antenna system and, in live tests, used a commercial phased array to command a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. In September it opened a 185,000 sq ft headquarters and factory in Torrance, which the company says has increased its manufacturing capacity more than fivefold. According to Via Satellite, Northwood built 29 antennas over the past year and wants to produce hundreds.
“We have built hardware that performs and a network that can support the most demanding missions,” said Bridgit Mendler, co-founder and chief executive of Northwood.
Company background
Mendler, a former actress, founded Northwood in 2024 with her husband, Griffin Cleverly, the company’s chief technology officer. The company sells two main antenna products. Portal is a phased array system for command and control that can talk to six satellites at once. Prism is a high-throughput parabolic dish for payload data that connects to one satellite at a time. Northwood also offers software that lets satellite operators search for, reserve, update and cancel communication passes on its network. It sells antenna systems directly to some customers as well.
The company raised a $30m Series A in April 2025, co-led by Alpine Space Ventures and a16z. Its largest named customer is the US Space Force. With its Series B, Northwood announced a $49.8m Space Force contract to add capacity to the Satellite Control Network, which tracks and controls US military satellites and supports launches. Northwood said it has since added customers among US government agencies, commercial operators and traditional satellite operators, but it did not name them.
Katherine Boyle, a general partner at a16z who sits on Northwood’s board, said in the statement that “Northwood is building the ground network of the future”.
Market context and what to watch
The number of satellites that need ground links has risen quickly. The European Space Agency’s Space Environment Report 2025 counted about 11,000 active payloads among roughly 40,000 tracked objects in orbit, based on data up to the end of 2024. Northwood’s government work also addresses a long-running problem: a 2023 report from the US Government Accountability Office, cited by TechCrunch, noted that the Department of Defense had known about capacity issues on the Satellite Control Network since 2011.
Northwood says it will announce several new sites and network expansions in the first half of 2027. It aims to have sites capable of more than 100 Gbps in high-demand regions by the end of 2027. Other things to watch are whether the factory reaches its target of hundreds of antennas a year, whether the company names more commercial customers, and whether it wins further Space Force work. Mendler told Via Satellite there is significant government interest in the company but did not give more detail.
