K2 Space

Company research

Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals

Updated Aug 5, 2026

Overview

K2 Space is a privately held aerospace and defense company founded by former SpaceX engineers. It designs and manufactures large, high-power, modular satellite platforms intended to exploit heavy-lift launch vehicles and make high-capability spacecraft faster and less expensive to produce. Its stated strategy is vertically integrated manufacturing, with roughly 80–85% of platform hardware built in-house.

Primary product

Mega Class / Gravitas high-power satellite platforms for LEO, MEO, GEO and cislunar missions; the roadmap also includes a 100kW Giga Class platform.

Founded

2022

Headquarters

Torrance, California, USA (1355 Sepulveda Blvd, Torrance, CA 90501); commonly described as Los Angeles-based.

Team size

Approximately 200–300; public sources reported 223 on LinkedIn and more than 300 in July 2026, so the current range is uncertain.

Work style

Flexible

Industry

Aerospace and defense

Sub-industry

Satellite manufacturing, spacecraft platforms, electric propulsion, defense-space systems

Offices

Torrance, California — headquarters and 180,000-square-foot factory

West Hollywood, California

Greater Seattle/Bellevue area, Washington — engineering hub announced July 2026; exact location was still being finalized

Washington, D.C. — policy and strategy office

Business model

B2B satellite-platform design and manufacturing

Government and defense contracting

Commercial satellite-bus supply

Hosted-payload and mission-integration services

SBIR/STTR and other government-funded R&D

Funding

Stage

Late-stage venture / Series D private company

Total raised

$1B

Latest round

Series D · Jul 2026

Latest amount

$500M

Series D

Jul 2026 · Kleiner Perkins and ICONIQ

$500M

Series C

Dec 2025 · Redpoint Ventures

$250M

Series B

Feb 2025

$110M

Series A / venture round

Feb 2024 · Altimeter Capital

$50M

Series A

Jun 2023

Seed

Mar 2023 · First Round Capital and Republic Capital participated

$8.5M

Grant / SBIR-STTR

Jan 2023

$150K

People & investors

Leadership

Karan Kunjur

Co-Founder and CEO

Neel Kunjur

Co-Founder and CTO

John Plumb

Head of Strategy

Pieter Kranenburg

Head of National Security Programs

Drew Miller

Head of Structures & Mechanisms

Michael Saqr

Head of Software

Rafael Martinez

Head of Propulsion

Jesse Klekamp

Head of People

Investors

Alpine Space Ventures

Lightspeed Venture Partners

T. Rowe Price Associates

Work & culture

Engineering-led, mission-focused and strongly oriented toward in-person collaboration. Public recruiting language emphasizes tackling difficult, unconventional spacecraft problems, broad software ownership across the stack, rapid hardware/software iteration and the principle that the job ends when systems operate reliably in space.

Work style

Flexible

Visa sponsorship

Limited

Compensation

Public software postings show approximately $123,000–$160,000 plus equity for an application software engineer, $150,000–$200,000 plus equity for a senior ground software engineer, and $160,000–$200,000 plus equity for a senior flight software engineer. Roles may be subject to U.S.-person/ITAR restrictions.

Benefits

Medical, dental and vision coverage

Life insurance

Paid time off

Paid parental leave

Equity

Other unspecified perks

Product & market

Pricing

Not publicly published as a general price list; project and contract-based B2B/government sales. CNBC reported an advertised Mega-class unit price of approximately $15 million in 2024.

Differentiators

—Large rather than miniaturized spacecraft architecture
—Approximately 20kW Mega-class power and high payload mass
—Heavy-lift launch vehicle compatibility
—High degree of vertical integration
—In-house electric propulsion, avionics, solar arrays and power systems
—Claimed order-of-magnitude cost reduction versus conventional large satellites
—Factory designed for up to 100 satellites annually
—Multi-orbit capability spanning LEO, MEO, GEO and cislunar missions

Technology

20kW dual-channel Hall-effect electric propulsion

Radiation-tolerant avionics and redundant flight computing

High-voltage power systems above 150V

Large deployable solar arrays

Modular standardized satellite architecture

FPGA development using VHDL and SystemVerilog

Flight and embedded software using Rust, C and C++

Ground software using Rust, TypeScript/Vue and cloud-native infrastructure

AWS, Kubernetes/EKS, Terraform and CI/CD

Real-time telemetry and test-data infrastructure; Sift is a disclosed technology partner

Customers

SES / planned meoSphere MEO network

U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Space Force

Anduril Industries-led Golden Dome interceptor effort

SES Space & Defense-led Protected Tactical SATCOM-Global effort

NASA-related telescope/science users

Commercial and government payload customers on Gravitas

Competitors

York Space Systems

Astranis

Apex Space

Perigee Aerospace

Viasat

Rocket Lab satellite systems

Scale & contact

Estimated revenue

Approximately $20M–$30M annually; third-party estimates are not audited and conflict with the company's much larger forward contract backlog.

Signals & risks

Other

Jul 2026

SpaceNews reported a $22.9 million Space Force award for two hosted laser-communications-terminal demonstrations, reflecting meaningful government-program exposure and execution requirements.

Source

Other

Mar 2026

Gravitas, K2's first large satellite, launched and entered its operational demonstration; repeated production, orbital maneuvering and constellation execution remain major scale-up milestones.

Source

Latest news

Space Force awards K2 Space $22.9 million for orbital laser communications demonstration

SpaceNews · Aug 2026

K2 will procure, integrate, launch and operate two hosted Enterprise Space Terminals on separate K2 satellites, with completion planned by 2028.

K2 Space Raises $500M Series D at $6.8B Valuation

Payload · Jul 2026

The round brought cumulative financing above $1 billion and followed SES, Anduril and Space Force-related contract wins.

K2 Space raises $500 million for commercial, defense satellite expansion

SpaceNews · Jul 2026

Series D financing reportedly more than doubled the company's valuation in seven months; K2 said it had nearly 300 employees, a 180,000-square-foot factory and plans for large-scale production.

K2 Space sets up satellite engineering office in Seattle area

GeekWire · Jul 2026

K2 announced a Seattle-area engineering hub to support flight software, autonomy and low-level systems; the company reported more than 300 employees and over $1 billion in contracts.

K2 Space raises $250 million to scale high-power satellite line

SpaceNews · Dec 2025

Series C was led by Redpoint at a reported $3 billion valuation, supporting the Mega Class line, Gravitas and factory expansion.

Open Positions

187 jobs at K2 Space

Senior ASIC Emulation Engineer

Remote

Silicon

United States - Remote

2d ago

Remote

Full-time