Venture capital groups for Airbus and Boeing have teamed with others to provide a $10 million seed funding round for Arizona-based Solestial, a startup working on solar panel technology for satellites and spacecraft.
Airbus Ventures led the round and was joined by AEI HorizonX–a joint venture between Boeing and leading private equity firm AE Industrial Partners–as well as GPVC, Stellar Ventures, Industrious Ventures and others.
A Solestial announcement says the new funding will be used to ramp up production and customer engagement as the company expands ground and flight testing. It will also fund research and development and sales and marketing activities.
Solestial’s core technology, which it has been working on for a decade as an Arizona State University spinout, is an “ultra-thin” silicon solar cell that can self-cure radiation damage at normal operating temperatures in space, the company says. It is packaged in a “flexible, lightweight panel designed to achieve minimum degradation for up to 10 years in LEO.” What is more, the panels can be mass-produced using automation, resulting in 90% lower costs than incumbent technologies and “virtually unlimited” manufacturing capacity.
“From the start of our diligence process, we were instantly impressed by Solestial’s solar cell technology, and we’re proud to be leading this impressive syndicate on a mission to help deliver advanced, lightweight, cost-effective solutions that power the new space economy,” says Mat Costes, partner at Airbus Ventures.
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