LA Space Startup Vast Secures $500M
Long Beach-based Vast just closed a massive $500M round to build its Haven-1 commercial space station. The deal, one of the largest ever for a private space company, includes $300M in equity and $200M in debt, signaling huge investor appetite for LA's 'moonshot' infrastructure plays. The first launch is projected for Q1 2027.
Vast's founder, Jed McCaleb, is a serial entrepreneur with deep roots in the tech and crypto worlds, having co-founded Ripple and created the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. His estimated net worth is around $2.9 billion, and prior to this funding round, he was the sole investor in Vast, which he founded in 2021. The latest $500M round was led by Balerion Space Ventures and included participation from IQT, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), and Japan's Mitsui & Co., among others. This infusion brings the total investment in Vast to over $1 billion. As part of the deal, former NASA Chief Technologist A.C. Charania will join Vast's board, signaling a strong alignment with national space objectives. Vast's long-term vision is to develop a 100-meter-long, spinning space station capable of generating artificial gravity, a crucial step for enabling long-duration human habitation in space by mitigating health issues like bone density loss. The Haven-1 station, however, will operate in microgravity but will be a testbed for technologies needed for this larger vision. The first crewed mission to Haven-1, dubbed Vast-1, will carry four astronauts for a stay of up to 30 days. This mission will be launched via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and the crew will travel aboard a Dragon spacecraft. Vast is selling seats on this inaugural flight to space agencies and private individuals. The Haven-1 station itself is designed for a three-year lifespan and can support four short-duration missions. It will feature a large window dome for observation and will be equipped to support research and in-space manufacturing with 1000W of power and 24/7 communications. Vast is entering an increasingly competitive field for commercial space stations, with players like Axiom Space, Blue Origin (with its Orbital Reef concept), and a partnership between Voyager Space and Airbus (for the Starlab station) all vying to become successors to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA is actively encouraging this private development through its Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Development program as it plans to retire the ISS.
