Ali Javaheri covers emerging spaces as a senior research analyst at PitchBook.

Space startups raised more venture capital in the first half of 2026 than during all of last year, as investors concentrated larger checks in companies moving from technical validation toward manufacturing and production.

Venture-backed space companies raised $11.3 billion across 244 deals through June, according to PitchBook's 2026 Vertical Snapshot: Space Tech, surpassing the $10.1 billion invested across 433 deals in all of 2025.

The increase reflects bigger financings rather than a comparable surge in dealmaking.

The median round more than doubled to $14.5 million from $7 million last year, while venture-growth and late-stage deals captured 87.4% of total investment.

Seed funding fell to about 1.5% of capital deployed, the lowest share on record.

Money has flowed heavily toward capital-intensive categories. Commercial launch companies raised about $3 billion in H1, satellites attracted $2.8 billion, and space infrastructure drew $1.2 billion.

Space tech is increasingly being treated as an industrial scale-up market rather than an early-stage technology bet. That is bullish for established companies with contracts and production capacity, but it also leaves a growing question over whether today's funding boom is producing enough new companies to sustain the sector's pipeline.

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This article originally appeared on PitchBook News