Stoke Space raises $1 billion Series E to scale fully reusable Nova rockets

Stoke Space Technologies has completed the initial closing of a $1 billion Series E round, money the startup intends to spend on reaching orbit with its first rocket and on preparing a larger second-generation vehicle for operations. CEO Andy Lapsa told TechCrunch the round is about scale: laying in infrastructure, raising production capacity and flight frequency, and funding development of the follow-on rocket. The financing brings Stoke's total raised to $2.3 billion.

Who is backing the round

Point72 Ventures, the technology investment vehicle of hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, co-led the round with Spark Capital. General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovation Technology, Washington Harbour Partners, Woven Capital and Y Combinator also participated, among other investors.

A rocket where both stages come back

Stoke competes in a field of launch startups that includes Rocket Lab, Relativity Space and Firefly Aerospace, but its bet is more aggressive than most of its peers. Those rivals have built businesses around partially recoverable vehicles, while Stoke is designing a rocket whose booster and second stage both return to Earth for reuse — something no operator has demonstrated. SpaceX's Falcon 9 recovers only its booster, and its fully reusable Starship program has, according to TechCrunch, absorbed well over $10 billion across the past decade without yet reaching orbit.

A heat shield fed by liquid hydrogen

Recovering an upper stage is largely a heat problem, and TechCrunch reports that SpaceX has struggled to settle on the right materials and configuration for Starship's second-stage shielding. Stoke's alternative is active cooling: super-cold liquid hydrogen flows through the thermal protection system itself. Lapsa said the design has been tested extensively on the ground and will fly on the first mission, and that engineers can circulate more coolant than strictly needed to keep vehicle surfaces cooler than required on early flights.

Nova Pathfinder aims for early 2027

Stoke's first vehicle, the Nova Pathfinder, is expected to fly in early 2027. Lapsa told TechCrunch he is willing to state that target publicly after a series of structural and operational tests on the rocket's first stage at the company's Moses Lake facility. The next steps are ground test-firings of each stage and then bringing the vehicle together with its launch pad systems. The Pathfinder is designed to carry three metric tons to low-Earth orbit, a debut capacity Lapsa believes is the largest of any US rocket maker's first vehicle. Launch contracts for the Pathfinder have already been sold, and according to Lapsa multiple vehicles are in production, giving the company confidence independent of the new funding.

A bigger rocket timed against the Falcon 9

Stoke also outlined Nova Block 2, a larger vehicle built on the same engines and cooling technology that has been in development for several years. It is sized to lift 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, slightly more than the Falcon 9, with a target deployment of 2029 — roughly when Elon Musk has said the Falcon 9 will be phased out. Lapsa acknowledged that any such retirement would widen the gap between launch supply and demand, while arguing that the space economy grows only as fast as rockets serving third-party customers get off the ground. Unlike SpaceX, Stoke has not announced plans to operate its own satellites or other orbital assets, which positions it as a neutral option for operators who might otherwise compete with SpaceX's internal projects for Starship capacity.

Why it matters

Reusability is the mechanism that took the Falcon 9 from novelty to dominance, and a second provider that recovers both stages could push launch prices down further while adding capacity the industry says it needs. For satellite operators and government agencies, a fully reusable alternative that does not also fly its own constellations would reduce dependence on a single supplier. The round also shows investors are still willing to fund capital-intensive hardware bets at scale, though the plan rests on timelines — orbit in 2027, Block 2 in 2029 — in an industry where delays are routine, and where simply reaching orbit on the first attempt would count as an achievement.