Gas Stations in Space: A New Dawn for Refuelable Satellites

**Stefan Powell** (0:00)
There is generally a lot of interest in space right now, you know, the SpaceX IPO, there's a ton of eyeballs looking at space and starting to get a sniff of just how important and how strategic these capabilities are.

**Madison Malone** (0:11)
You've met Stefan Powell before. He took us to the tarmac where his company Dawn Aerospace flies a supersonic space plane last year. At the time, he was in the middle of a global capital raise, and he can finally share more details.

**Stefan Powell** (0:23)
Yeah, we should get to positive ROI before we run out of cash.

**Madison Malone** (0:26)
Dawn's domain is space transportation hardware. Including satellite propulsion on systems already in orbit.
With this funding, he wants to create a new market. Satellites that can be refueled.

**Stefan Powell** (0:39)
About 80% of satellites run out of fuel and are decommissioned for that reason, not because they broke. So the starting point is essentially yes, gas stations in space.

**Madison Malone** (0:50)
There's already national security incentives for refueling. But Stefan believes every constellation could be queuing up next.

**Stefan Powell** (0:57)
Establishing in-space refueling is principally an economic thing. Like that is the long-term driver. It just dramatically increases the usefulness of a single satellite.

**Madison Malone** (1:08)
And full disclosure, my family participated in Dawn's raise, which recently expanded by one.

**Stefan Powell** (1:13)
Yeah, you had a kid just not longer, right?

**Madison Malone** (1:15)
Yeah, I popped out a kid, what, just over six weeks ago?

**Stefan Powell** (1:19)
Yeah. Man, you are full noise.

**Madison Malone** (1:22)
He's alive. I'm alive. We're all good.
Thank you so much for doing this, Stefan. So good to see you. And a huge congrats on the massive raise, 25 million USD for your Series B. Is that what you were targeting, or was that oversubscribed?

**Stefan Powell** (1:36)
Yeah, that's what we were targeting. And yeah, we had to turn away money in the end. That's really, that's all the business really needs at this point to unlock a whole bunch of new programs and really get going because we were able to raise from a position of strength of, of, you know, we're actually putting cash away. We have been full for some time. So yeah, we can really plough this money into R&D.

**Madison Malone** (1:58)
What kind of runway does this give Dawn in terms of timing? What kind of projects and expansion does this funding allow you to chase?

**Stefan Powell** (2:04)
Yeah, so this is where we actually kind of break the mold a little bit. Because we were cash flow generating, runway doesn't really make sense anymore. So it's like, yes, we will be upping our spend, but we up our spend in a way that will return. We should get to positive ROI before we run out of cash. So we should actually get to profitability. So if you look at our projections, like yes, the cash dips down a bit, but it actually comes back up. So runway is effectively infinite. So it doesn't really make sense to talk about it in that way. We'll be increasing spend. We expect to get back to profitability within two years.

**Madison Malone** (2:35)
I definitely want to talk more about the financials, especially the fact that you're now cash flow positive and the influence that those numbers had on the round. But can you just take us inside the capital raise and inside the round? There's a lot of funds on there, some existing, some new, obviously led by Bollerian, which is involved in many incredible space companies. It's actually invested in a nuclear company that I spoke to in the United States, Valor Atomics. So they're very much across all of these new frontier technologies, including space transportation. Were you looking for funds that had played in this space before?

**Stefan Powell** (3:08)
Yeah. So we had multiple term sheets from both Insider and other US investors, which was a really nice position to be in. We chose to go with Bollerian because, but for two main reasons. So firstly, they are a space-specific VC. They are across a ton of companies. And so them putting their weight behind Dawn is a very clear signal that our mission, our vision, they believe that it matches with the wider ecosystem needs, and it's going to make sense in that wider ecosystem. Like we're going where the puck's going, so to speak. So that's a huge vote of confidence. That's a massive signal to a lot of other investors, because there is generally a lot of interest in space right now. The SpaceX IPO, there's a ton of eyeballs looking at space, and starting to get a sniff of just how important and how strategic these capabilities are. But a lot of these investors are not particularly deep in the weeds in space. And for a technology field that is deep tech, it is very challenging, it's quite intimidating sometimes, and the nuances matter.