The Exploration Company

Space · Aerospace · Deep Tech

Funding

Europe's SpaceX rival The Exploration Company in talks for $300M at $2B

A EU-backed fund is angling to fund the only continental bid to build a reusable capsule that can return cargo from orbit.

• The Exploration Company is in talks to raise at least $300 million in a round that would value it above $2 billion, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
• The Munich-based startup, founded in 2021 by Hélène Huby, is building Nyx, a reusable space capsule meant to dock with any space station and return cargo to Earth.
• The EU's $5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, is in talks to make one of its first investments in the round.
• The company last raised about $160 million in 2024 without disclosing a valuation; secondary-market tracker Premier Alternatives pegged its worth at roughly $470 million that December.
• Europe currently has no hardware of its own to bring cargo back from orbit, a gap the company is positioning Nyx to fill for the ISS and its successor stations.
• The deal reflects a broader push by EU-backed capital to keep promising deep-tech scale-ups from raising abroad, testing whether Europe can grow its own SpaceX-scale challengers at home.