K2 Space

K2 Space

K2 Space is a satellite manufacturer in Torrance, California, founded in 2022 by brothers Karan Kunjur, the chief executive, and Neel Kunjur, the chief technology officer. Its bet runs against the smallsat consensus: rather than shrinking spacecraft, K2 builds large, high-power buses and sells them at prices the company says are closer to smallsat economics. Customers are commercial satellite operators and the US Space Force.

Platforms

The Mega Class bus is the product. K2 says it delivers roughly 20 kilowatts of power and carries up to 3,000 kilograms of payload on a three-metre-square deck, against the two kilowatts and 200 kilograms typical of a constellation satellite, and that it can operate in low, medium and geostationary orbit. In February 2025 the company said the bus could be built for under $15 million a unit with lead times below three months — a target, not a demonstrated production cost.

Gravitas, the first fully integrated Mega Class satellite, launched in March 2026 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare, funded by a $60 million Space Force STRATFI award announced in December 2024. The mission is meant to demonstrate a 20-kilowatt Hall-effect thruster, twin 10-kilowatt solar arrays and an electric-propulsion orbit raise from LEO to MEO. K2 said in July 2026 that Gravitas was operating in orbit; it has not published a full mission result.

Two follow-ons are announced but unflown: Trinity, multiple satellites across three orbits in the second quarter of 2027, and a 100-kilowatt Giga Class platform targeted for the second half of 2028.

Funding and Contracts

K2 raised a $110 million Series B in February 2025 co-led by Lightspeed and Altimeter, a $250 million Series C in December 2025 led by Redpoint at a $3 billion valuation, and a $500 million Series D announced on 30 July 2026, co-led by Kleiner Perkins and ICONIQ at $6.8 billion. Cumulative funding passed $1 billion.

Signed contracts also passed $1 billion by mid-2026. SES ordered 28 satellites in March 2026 for its meoSphere MEO network, slated to be operational by 2030 and eventually to reach about 100 spacecraft. In June 2026 K2 was named bus provider under the Space Force’s Protected Tactical SATCOM–Global programme, its first selection on a Pentagon programme of record. It also holds a $22.9 million firm-fixed-price Space Force contract for two Enterprise Space Terminals hosted through November 2028, and works with Anduril on space-based interceptors for Golden Dome.

Why It Matters

K2 has already won the argument on paper. A $6.8 billion valuation and a $1 billion order book rest on a bus that has flown exactly once, in a demonstration whose headline manoeuvre the company has not publicly confirmed as complete. The Torrance factory is sized for about 100 satellites a year and K2 says it is 85 per cent vertically integrated; actual delivered volume is in the single digits. Everything now depends on whether SES gets 28 working satellites on schedule.