Rocket Lab buys Mynaric

Rocket Lab said Tuesday it completed its acquisition of Mynaric, bringing satellite laser-communications hardware in house for defense and commercial spacecraft programs. (markets.businessinsider.com) The deal closed on April 14 after Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy approved the transaction on March 30. Rocket Lab said Mynaric will remain headquartered in Munich, giving the company its first European footprint. (nasdaq.com) Rocket Lab said it paid aggregate consideration worth $155.3 million, made up of a nominal cash payment and 2,277,002 shares of common stock. When Rocket Lab first disclosed the agreement in October 2025, it described a $75 million upfront deal with as much as $75 million more tied to earnouts. (financialcontent.com) (stocktitan.net) Laser links are the space version of fiber-optic cables: satellites point narrow beams of light at each other to move data faster and with less radio-spectrum congestion. Rocket Lab said those terminals have been hard to source in large volumes and at lower cost, turning them into a supply bottleneck for constellation builders. (nasdaq.com) (rocketlabcorp.com) That bottleneck mattered directly to Rocket Lab before the acquisition. Mynaric was already supplying CONDOR Mk3 optical terminals for Rocket Lab’s Space Development Agency prime contracts covering 36 satellites across the Transport Layer-Beta Tranche 2 and Tracking Layer Tranche 3 programs, which Rocket Lab has said total $1.3 billion. (nasdaq.com) (techcrunch.com) Mynaric came into the deal after a financial restructuring under Germany’s Corporate Stabilization and Restructuring Act, known as StaRUG. The company said on August 19, 2025, that it had completed that process and secured long-term funding through December 31, 2028. (mynaric.com) Rocket Lab has framed the purchase as part of a broader strategy to own more of the parts that go into its spacecraft, from components to software. In its March 2025 announcement, the company said Mynaric had more than 300 engineers and staff in Munich, plus production assets, inventory, backlog, and intellectual property tied to optical inter-satellite links. (rocketlabcorp.com) The immediate next step is production. Rocket Lab said it plans to scale Mynaric’s output so laser terminals can be delivered at the volume and pace demanded by government and commercial satellite customers in Europe, the United States, and other markets. (finance.yahoo.com)