Insider Brief
- Asteroid mining startup Karman+ has raised $20 million in seed funding led by Plural and Hummingbird to develop its first technology demonstration mission and customer missions, targeting 2027.
- Karman+ aims to extract water and regolith from near-Earth asteroids to provide fuel and materials for the growing space economy, reducing costs for in-orbit refueling and deep space missions.
- The company is taking an open collaboration approach to mission development, leveraging autonomous operations, off-the-shelf components, and scalable technology to make commercial asteroid mining viable.
PRESS RELEASE — Karman+, an asteroid mining startup, has raised $20 million in seed funding led by Plural and Hummingbird. The funding, which included participation from HCVC, Kevin Mahaffey (Lookout), co-founder Teun van den Dries and angel investors, will be used to develop its first technology demonstration mission and customer missions, expected in 2027.
Founded by serial entrepreneur Teun van den Dries (CEO) and technology strategist Daynan Crull (Mission Architect), Karman+ seeks to mine space resources from near-Earth asteroids to provide abundant, sustainable energy and resources in space and for Earth. This space frontier is on track to become a multi-trillion dollar economy, providing critical communications, intelligence, research and manufacturing, which impact our daily lives. However, this economy cannot be sustained without access to affordable and abundant resources.
Returning material from asteroids has been demonstrated by multiple missions, including JAXA’s Hayabusa 1 and 2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx missions. Yet these missions incur staggering costs, with the OSIRIS-REx mission costing over $1.3 billion to return 121 grams of material – equivalent to about $10.7 billion per kilogram of material. Karman+ is on a mission to make commercial asteroid mining a reality with scalable low-cost missions that reduce the cost of delivering material to customers by several orders of magnitude.
Extracting abundant compounds for the space economy
Crucial to Karman+’s roadmap is excavating regolith material from near-Earth asteroids and extracting water for refueling in orbit. This water can be used directly to power spacecraft or decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen, eliminating the need to launch from the Earth’s gravity well. This lowers refueling costs for satellites in orbit by up to 10x compared to Earth-sourced fuel and enables deep space missions that are impossible now.
High Frontier, Karman+’s first technical demonstration mission, is set to prove the approach the company is taking to scale deep space excavation missions. The team is developing technology for autonomous operations, such as optical navigation for interplanetary cruises, (known as beacon nav), for mapping and interacting with the asteroid and creating zero-gravity mining equipment for asteroid regolith excavation at scale. Using a “COTS+” approach, the team leverages off-the-shelf components from other industries that it tests and qualifies for space to build its spacecraft platform and systems in-house, enabling it to drive the mission budget under $10 million.
Karman+ will initially use asteroid regolith for refueling space tugs that service existing satellites in geostationary orbit. This existing market opens the door to asteroid-based In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), supporting the vast and growing array of R&D in space, including in-orbit manufacturing for pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. In the long term, Karman+ aims to transform industries such as manufacturing and energy by moving production off Earth to eliminate the devastating social and environmental impacts of these activities and enable humans to flourish on Earth and beyond.
The company is breaking from the habits of private space companies which shroud themselves in secrecy through open collaboration with the global space community and by providing live updates on its journey as it moves forward. Karman+’s “open space” approach to mission development is founded on principles of transparency and has created a feedback loop across the industry, creating value by setting the right vision, building strong teams, and executing well.
Teun van den Dries, co-founder and CEO of Karman+ said: “The idea of mining asteroids has moved out of science fiction and academic research into a commercial market opportunity that we can build for today. Over the next two years, we are building the technology and infrastructure to make it possible to access materials in orbit and transform them into rocket fuel to supply the space economy. We believe the Regolith Age, powered by abundant space resources, is an inevitability that we can accelerate and we’re delighted to have the support of passionate investors on this journey with us.”
Sten Tamkivi, Partner at Plural said: “Opening up the space economy will be essential in the long term to build our resilience here on Earth for solving challenges like climate change by accessing these critical materials. But many steps must be taken before we get there. Teun and Daynan are ripping up the space rulebook and using their previous startup experience to build a new type of asteroid mining company that will first tap into a great need: supplying water and fuel to existing space programs. I’m excited to partner with a successful, experienced founder on such a globally significant mission.”
Barend van den Brande, partner at Hummingbird said: “Karman+ is going to open up asteroid mining and provide the means to support the space economy, first for fuel and manufacturing in the future. The founders have an impressive track record and the momentum to break down barriers that have held this industry back from making an impact. We look forward to being a part of their exciting journey.”
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