The fuel for a fully reusable rocket that can unlock truly low-cost access to space isn’t methane or liquid oxygen. It’s cash, and Stoke Space Technologies is tanking up. The company has now “completed the initial closing” of a $1 billion Series E round intended to help it reach orbit and prepare a new, larger rocket for operations.
Stoke is one of a handful of startups attempting to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the low-cost rocket launch space. SpaceX was built around the Falcon 9, which has a reusable booster stage, and now Musk and company are trying to field a huge, fully-reusable rocket, Starship. But unlike its rivals Rocket Lab, Relativity Space or Firefly Aerospace, Lapsa’s company is aiming straight at that holy grail: A rocket where both the booster stage and the payload-carrying second stage come back to Earth so they can be reused cheaply.
It’s never been done before. Such ambition and technical feats require capital. SpaceX has spent well over $10 billion on Starship over the last decade, and the vehicle still hasn’t yet reached orbit, although that may change on its next flight.
Now, Stoke has raised $2.3 billion in total. In particular, SpaceX has struggled to identify the right materials and configuration for the components that shield the second stage of the rocket from the extreme heat caused when it is reentering the atmosphere. Stoke instead flows super-cooled liquid hydrogen through its thermal shielding, a unique active cooling solution that Lapsa says has been tested exhaustively on the ground and will be deployed on the first flight.
Lapsa said that he expects Stoke’s first vehicle, the Nova Pathfinder, to take flight in early 2027. In a business known for delays, he’s confident sharing that target following a series of structural and operational tests on the rocket’s first stage at the company’s Moses Lake facility. Next up is test-firing each stage of the rocket on the ground to ensure they are ready for flight.
That said, few rockets get off the ground on time or with total success, and simply getting to orbit would be an achievement. Stoke also revealed plans for an even bigger rocket, the Nova Block 2, that has been under development for the past few years. Based on the same technologies as the Pathfinder, including the engines and the company’s novel heat shield, that vehicle will be able to bring 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, slightly more than the Falcon 9.
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