X-Bow closes $105M Series B round, enters Lockheed partnership pact

X-Bow Systems, the space company pushing to be a major solid rocket motor production player, has captured $105 million in Series B capital from investors to support the expansion of its production capacity and workforce.

This round announced Monday is also notable given who led it: Lockheed Martin. The world’s largest defense company was an early backer of X-Bow, along with Boeing Ventures and both are continuing to be involved.

Lockheed specifically has entered a strategic partnership agreement to “accelerate X-Bow as a new independent supplier of SRMs and other services for their existing and future programs,” according to X-Bow’s announcement.

Other Series B participants included Razor's Edge Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Balerion Space Ventures, Bravo Victor Venture Capital, Upsher Management Company, Capital Factory Ventures, Arkenstone Capital and Event Horizon Capital.

Since its inception in 2016, X-Bow has sought to take market share from and disrupt the duopoly in solid rocket motor manufacturing that today comprises Northrop Grumman and L3Harris Technologies.

Those motors are one facet of the larger munitions sector, where supply chains and stocks have been stressed for many years and especially with Ukraine’s defense against Russia since the spring of 2022.

X-Bow’s portfolio of government contracts includes a $64 million award secured in 2023, which was expanded in December, to increase the production capacity of its facilities for supplying SRMs to the Army and Navy.

X-Bow is also constructing an energetics campus in the Austin, Texas, metropolitan region to further iterate a technique it calls AMSP -- Advanced Manufacturing of Solid Propellant.

AMSP leans on additive manufacturing techniques like three-dimensional printing to make solid rocket motors at a larger scale than traditional methods, but at a lower cost per unit.

Union Square Advisors acted as the exclusive financial adviser to X-Bow for this financing transaction.