Fortastra announces USD30 million fundraise to build orbital security platform

Assembly work on Fortastra's Watchdog V0 spacecraft (Fortastra)

Fortastra, a California-based company developing spacecraft for orbital security applications, has finalised a USD30 million Series A fundraise, the company said in an 8 October statement.

“The round was led by First In with participation from Upfront, Space Capital, Rsquared, Side Door Ventures, ATX Ventures, amongst others as well as existing investors,” the statement said.

The funding will help “accelerate development and commissioning of Fortastra's on-orbit security platforms, expand the company's engineering and operations team, and continue developing its core autonomy and manufacturing capabilities”, according to the statement.

Contested domain

Fortastra was founded in 2025 as a “space defence company”, Mike Smayda, founder and CEO for Fortastra, told Janes on 6 October. The company announced a USD8 million seed round in December 2025, and earlier this year was selected as an awardee under the US Space Force's Adaptive and Intelligent Space Challenge to accelerate on-orbit computing, sensing, and orchestration technologies.

As more critical infrastructure is stationed in space, there will be a need to protect it, Smayda said. “This also becomes a commercial problem whereby commercial infrastructure is under threat. You see that in other domains like Iran shooting at Amazon data centres in the Middle East”, Smayda said.

“You're starting to see that in space as well, especially as the potential for bad actors being able to access and operate in that domain continues to proliferate as other countries' commercial ecosystems evolve,” Smayda added.

To meet this challenge, Fortastra is developing “spacecraft that can see and understand the environment around them, can interact with other spacecraft, and defend other spacecraft”, Smayda explained.

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