Rocket Lab

Founder/s: Peter Beck
Key people: Peter Beck (Founder & Chief Executive Officer) and Bradley Schneider (VP of USA Operations)
Number of employees: 11 – 50

Rocket Lab is redefining how we access space. Our orbital launch vehicle Electron is poised to change the space industry by providing dedicated low-cost, high-frequency launches for the emerging small satellite market.

History

Rocket Lab was founded in 2006 by New Zealander Peter Beck, the company’s CEO and CTO. Internet entrepreneur Mark Rocket was the seed investor and co-director from 2007 to 2011. In 2009 Rocket Lab claimed it had become the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space with the Ātea-1 sounding rocket. The payload was not recovered. This was not deemed necessary. As an instrumentation dart, the payload was not powered; its trajectory depended only on the boost phase of flight. The boost stage was recovered, and did have flight telemetry, on which the claim of reaching space was based.

In December 2010 Rocket Lab was awarded a U.S. government contract from the Operationally Responsive Space Office (ORS) to study a low cost space launcher to place nanosatellites into orbit.

Funding was obtained from Khosla Ventures in 2013, and Callaghan Innovation and Bessemer Venture Partners in 2014. In March 2017, the company announced that it had raised an additional US$75 million in a Series D equity round led by Data Collective with participation by Promus Ventures and several previous investors.