Aerospace company SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, successfully on Thursday, the first batch of 60 small satellites into Earth orbit for the new Internet service Starlink, received more than $1 billion in funding in the past six months.
The investment is reported in two forms made public on Friday, sent by SpaceX to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The first document refers to a funding round launched last December that raised $486 million in equity. The second round of financing, which started in April this year, brought the company $535,7 million in investments.
The SEC forms indicate that there were eight investors in the first funding round and five in the second.
It is known that one of the investors is the Scottish investment bank Baillie Gifford. CNBC reported, citing unnamed sources, that the investors included venture capital firm Gigafund, led by longtime SpaceX supporters Luke Nosek, co-founder of PayPal, and Stephen Oskoui.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company needs major investment to fund the development and launch of the Starlink satellite constellation.
Musk sees the Starlink project as an important new revenue stream for his California company, which he expects to bring in about $3 billion a year.
Musk said it would take at least 12 more launches carrying similar payloads to achieve sustained Internet coverage of most of the world. At the moment, the Starlink service is only authorized for operations in the United States.
Source: 3dnews.ru