Bridgit Mendler raises $375 million for satellite ground network Northwood
Northwood, a satellite ground-network company headed by former actress Bridgit Mendler, just secured $375 million in a Series C funding round. The company plans to add 400 jobs over three years.
Bridgit Mendler, the former Disney Channel actress who co-founded Northwood with her husband, Griffin Cleverly, and Shaurya Luthra, just raised $375 million for space. Northwood, the California-based satellite ground-network company, secured the funding in a Series C round announced Monday. The financing round was co-led by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and DFJ Growth, a venture capital firm.
Other investors included Washington Harbour Partners, Alpine Space Ventures, StepStone, and In-Q-Tel (IQT), the venture capital arm of the U.S. intelligence community. Mendler rose to fame on the Disney Channel show Good Luck Charlie before studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School and working at the Federal Communications Commission.
Northwood aims to make ground stations, which use antennas to communicate with satellites, cheaper and faster to deploy. Ground capacity has become a bottleneck as thousands of space missions launch each year, creating a gap its two main products, Prism and Portal, are designed to close.
Prism is a nearly 8-foot antenna that supports satellite communications, while Portal is a high-powered phased array used for satellite tracking. The company now has more than 140 employees and plans to add 400 jobs in Torrance, California, and Washington, D.C., over the next three years.
In September, Northwood opened a 185,000-square-foot headquarters and factory in Torrance that will produce hundreds of antennas per year. Katherine Boyle, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said her firm backed Northwood in every round because ground infrastructure is essential to making space abundant.
