- Stoke Space closes $1B Series E, taking total funding to $2.3 billion.
- Nova, the rocket the money is meant to prove, still hasn’t reached orbit.
- Days earlier, Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum became the first private rocket to orbit from mainland Europe.
Stoke Space has closed the first tranche of a $1 billion Series E, taking the reusable-rocket startup’s total capital raised to $2.3 billion. The rocket the money is meant to prove, Nova, has never left the ground.
Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital co-led the round, joined by General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovation Technology, Washington Harbour Partners, Woven Capital, Y Combinator and others. The cash funds Nova Pathfinder’s first orbital launch, expands production and launch infrastructure, and accelerates development of a second, larger rocket that the company revealed for the first time this week.
“Stoke is pursuing what we see as one of the most important opportunities in space transportation: making launch fully reusable, reliable, and scalable. Having supported Stoke through multiple stages of its growth, we believe this company has demonstrated both the exceptional technical progress and the ambition to build a launch system capable of serving the market at industrial scale,” said Chris Morales, Partner at Point72 Ventures.
Three days before Stoke announced its raise, Germany’s Isar Aerospace put its Spectrum rocket into orbit from Norway, becoming the first private company to launch an orbital vehicle from continental European soil. Spectrum is expendable, not reusable, and far smaller than Nova. But it did something Stoke’s rocket hasn’t: it flew. Isar raised a €270 million Series D in June, bringing its total to roughly €870 million.
From Blue Origin to $2.3 billion
Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman founded Stoke in 2019 after leaving Blue Origin, where Lapsa led development of the BE-3, BE-3U and BE-4 engines. Their pitch was a rocket in which both stages return and fly again, a harder engineering problem than the partial reusability SpaceX has already commercialised with Falcon 9.
Stoke has raised money four times since January 2025 alone: a $260 million Series C that brought total funding to $480 million; a $510 million Series D in October 2025, extended to $860 million in February 2026; and now the $1 billion Series E. In fact, TFN reported on the rumoured $500 million round back in October 2025, when it was expected to value Stoke at close to $2 billion. Roughly $2.1 billion of Stoke’s $2.3 billion total has arrived in that 20-month stretch.
A bigger rocket before the first one has flown
The Series E also funds Nova Block 2, disclosed publicly for the first time this week: a larger vehicle designed to carry up to 15 metric tons to low Earth orbit inside a five-metre fairing, targeting a 2029 debut.
“Nova Pathfinder is how we turn the promise of Nova into flight-proven capability. Nova Block 2 scales those lessons into the capacity and cadence our customers are asking for,” said Lapsa. Committing to a second, larger vehicle before the first has flown is an unusual sequence.
Capital keeps finding its way into adjacent parts of the sector regardless of flight status. K2 Space, which builds large satellites, raised $500 million at a $6.8 billion valuation in July. Impulse Space, an orbital-transfer company founded by former SpaceX propulsion chief Tom Mueller, raised $500 million at a $4.26 billion valuation in June. True Anomaly, a defence-focused space startup, raised $650 million at a $2.2 billion valuation in April.
None of that capital depends on an unproven reusable rocket reaching orbit. Stoke’s does.“Every mature transportation system is built around fully reusable vehicles. It’s the only way to reach the cost floor while scaling availability,” Lapsa said.
Clay Fisher, general partner at Spark Capital, put it more bluntly: “Full reusability is the inevitable end state of the market, providing an order-of-magnitude cost and service advantage over partially reusable rockets. Stoke had the right thesis seven years ago and has paired that prescient vision with a blistering pace of execution.”
Stoke says Pathfinder flies in early 2027. Whether investor conviction survives that date the way it’s survived every date before it is the question actually worth asking.
