By John Serafini, David Rothzeid, and Matt Kaplan
The space economy is entering a new phase of maturity. Thousands of satellites are now launched annually, and proliferated constellations serving new applications like direct-to-cell communications and orbital compute are driving dramatically higher power demands in orbit. At the same time, the Space Force budget is growing, its space superiority mission expanding. In the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 budget request released last month, the administration requested $71 billion for the United States Space Force (USSF). This is a 78% increase from the FY26 request, which itself was twice as large as the FY25 request. No other military service is growing nearly this fast or investing as much in new capabilities on a relative basis. Space superiority capabilities, including exquisite sensing, maneuverability, and autonomy, will require more power than ever. Star Catcher is building the power infrastructure in space to enable increasingly power demanding commercial and national security missions.
Space-to-space power beaming is not a new concept. AFRL and DARPA have explored the idea for decades, and in 2023 Caltech successfully demonstrated wireless power transmission in orbit. But for years, these efforts remained science projects without a clear commercial or government need. That is now changing. As satellites become more power intensive, orbital power delivery is becoming increasingly valuable infrastructure rather than a futuristic experiment.
The needs require a category-defining company that can build space’s power grid. Star Catcher was built to meet this moment. Cofounders Andrew Rush and Michael Snyder, previously leaders at Redwire and Made in Space, have both delivered essential space systems and pushed the frontiers of what’s possible. Along with cofounder Bryan Lyandvert, they started Star Catcher in 2024 to meet growing demand for space power infrastructure.
Since then, Star Catcher has achieved several meaningful technical milestones. In November, Star Catcher surpassed DARPA for the world record in optical power beaming. In April, Star Catcher demonstrated its tracking and acquisition software on-orbit with its partner Loft Orbital. With the $65M Series A, Star Catcher will launch the first-ever space-based optical power beaming demonstration later this year. This demonstration will accelerate their path toward delivering up to 10x more power to satellites with no retrofit or custom receiver required.
We at Shield Capital are proud to co-lead Star Catcher’s $65 million Series A alongside B Capital and Cerberus Ventures.