The Stoke Space Series E has closed its initial tranche at $1 billion, valuing the Kent, Washington-based launch startup at roughly $10 billion, according to Reuters, which cited a person familiar with the matter. The round was led by Point72 Ventures, the tech investment vehicle associated with hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, and Spark Capital, with additional participation from General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovation Technology, Washington Harbour Partners, Woven Capital and Y Combinator.
The money brings Stoke’s total capital raised to $2.3 billion. Of that, Payload Space reports that roughly $2.1 billion has arrived since January 2025, across a Series C, a Series D, an extension of that Series D to $860 million, and now this initial Series E closing, all before the company’s rocket has left the ground.
For context: when Rocket Lab closed its Series D in March 2017, it had raised $148 million in total.
What the Stoke Space Series E Is Actually Buying
‘This round is really to scale,’ CEO Andy Lapsa told TechCrunch. ‘To lay the infrastructure, to scale in production and flight frequency, and importantly to fund the development of the second generation vehicle.’
The prior Series D had focused on activating Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and expanding Nova production capacity. The Series E pushes further: manufacturing scale-up, expanded test and launch infrastructure, and full funding for the second-generation vehicle, the Nova Block 2.
Point72 Ventures partner Chris Morales framed the thesis plainly in the company’s official release: ‘Stoke is pursuing what we see as one of the most important opportunities in space transportation: making launch fully reusable, reliable, and scalable.’ Spark Capital General Partner Clay Fisher noted Stoke ‘had the right thesis seven years ago.’
The first vehicle, the Nova Pathfinder, is targeting an early 2027 maiden flight, a date that slipped from late 2026, according to Payload Space. Stoke plans to fly multiple Pathfinder missions through 2027 and 2028. The company has already sold launch contracts on a rocket that can carry three metric tons to low-Earth orbit, which it describes, on its Scaling Nova page, as ‘the largest first rocket undertaken by a U.S. launch company, exceeding the initial vehicles developed by today’s incumbents and newer’ entrants.
The first orbital attempt will not try to recover either stage. That inaugural mission will carry a satellite built by AstroForge to a heliocentric orbit, with recovery reserved for later flights once the vehicle has demonstrated it can reach orbit at all.
A Rocket Built to Outlast the Falcon 9
What separates Stoke from almost every other launch competitor is its insistence on full reusability from day one. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 recovers its first-stage booster but discards the upper stage on every flight. SpaceX has spent well over $10 billion developing its fully reusable Starship, which has still not reached orbit. Stoke is attempting the same end goal with a fraction of the resources, and a different engineering approach.
The Nova Pathfinder’s first stage carries seven Stoke-designed full-flow staged-combustion Zenith engines, burning liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas, producing a combined thrust exceeding 700,000 lbf. The second stage runs a single Andromeda expander-cycle engine on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, with a specific impulse above 400 seconds and thrust exceeding 25,000 lbf. That second stage also carries Stoke’s signature active thermal protection: super-cooled liquid hydrogen flows through the heat shield during re-entry, a system Lapsa says has been exhaustively tested on the ground.
‘We can flow excess coolant (more than we think we need in order to overcool the surface of the vehicle) and take a conservative stance from that perspective in early flights,’ Lapsa said.
The second-generation Nova Block 2, targeted for 2029, scales the same architecture: 14 Zenith engines on the first stage, a 5-metre payload fairing, and a capacity of 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, slightly more than the Falcon 9. That 2029 window is not accidental. Elon Musk has indicated the Falcon 9 will be phased out around the same time Starship is fully operational.
Lapsa is candid about what that means for the market. ‘It amplifies the mismatch between launch supply and demand for launch, there’s no question about that,’ he said. Satellite operators paying attention will note the subtext: when Starship flies commercially, those customers will be competing with SpaceX’s own internal constellation projects for manifest slots. Stoke, by contrast, has disclosed no plans to operate its own space assets.
The ground system at Moses Lake and the first-stage hardware are both checked out independently. The next milestone is firing each stage on its actual launch pad. ‘The next step is to do them together,’ Lapsa said. If that sequencing holds, the race to see whether Stoke’s fully reusable bet can reach orbit before its funding runs its course begins in earnest before the end of 2026.
