Intuitive Machines looks beyond the Moon with $800M acquisition

Since its inception in 2013, Intuitive Machines has spent much of its time and energy on space infrastructure manufacturing to help facilitate government and commercial customer access to the Moon.

Intuitive Machines naturally wanted to beyond that lunar focus in the next phase of its strategy, which led it to its agreement to acquire Lanteris Space Systems from private equity firm Advent International for $800 million in cash and stock.

That amount breaks out to $450 million in cash and $350 million in Intuitive Machines stock, a move that gives Advent an undisclosed stake in the combined business. Lanteris was formerly known as Maxar Space Systems and rebranded in early October, two years after Advent acquired it.

During a conference call with investors on Tuesday, Intuitive Machines chief executive Steve Altemus characterized the move as one aimed at complementing its data and services offerings with larger-scale hardware than it had before. Intuitive Machines' most recent acquisition involved its purchase of KinetiX in August for $30 million and sought to bring in more navigation software expertise.

Lanteris makes satellites and spacecraft systems, including buses that house the payload and all scientific instruments for carrying out in-space missions. The Maxar-1300 series bus is one example that is used in commercial communications satellites that operate geosynchronous Earth orbit.

“With the spark of innovation that Intuitive Machines brings and Lanteris' production scale and high reliability, we not only feed existing programs on both the Intuitive Machines side and the Lanteris side, but we can actually feed near space network and our own network capabilities in terms of communication data relay satellites,” Altemus said.

Intuitive Machines is touting the combined company’s pro forma revenue as $850 million and contract backlog of $920 million for the 12 month-period ended Sept. 30. Altemus said the sales profile is roughly an even split between government and commercial, while defense and civil are also level at 25% each.

With Lanteris in its fold, Intuitive Machines is positioning itself as a more complete and vertically-integrated space prime that covers all aspects of the spacecraft lifecycle. The company has emphasized delivery services, data transmission and infrastructure-as-a-service offerings in its lunar access strategy.

“What's really powerful is a total addressable market that we can unlock and open up, and the diverse revenue streams that we will create as taking the family of satellites that Lanteris currently builds and providing unique mission solutions to open up those markets and access those revenue streams,” Altemus said.

In the fall of 2024, NASA awarded Intuitive Machines a contract to provide a lunar satellite constellation in support of the agency’s Artemis program for establishing a permanent presence on the Moon.

But in this new phase, Artemis is also only one facet of Intuitive Machines’ push to think bigger. Altemus cited opportunities with the Space Development Agency and Golden Dome missile defense initiative as on the company’s watch list, along with NASA’s Mars Data Relay and Lunar Terrain Vehicle programs.

Altemus said the company is awaiting NASA’s award of the final LTV contract and the tracking layer for SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a complex constellation of satellites that watch for missile threats. L3Harris Technologies uses Lanteris’ satellite buses for the first and second tranches of PWSA.

Even amid this pivot toward more defense work, the Moon still remains a priority for Intuitive Machines as the company expects satellite capacity demands there to increase over the next three-to-four years.

Intuitive Machines is the sole awardee of NASA’s Near Space Network Services contract to facilitate data transmission for in-space communications and navigation.

The purchase of Lanteris is also intended to give Intuitive Machines more resources and internal heft to fulfill that demand, Altemus said.

“We're anticipating that need and providing more capability for size, weight and power on those buses so that we can provide the space domain awareness capabilities in that lunar constellation that we think the customers are going to want,” Altemus added. “This is an opportunity for us to grow that constellation.

All parties involved in the transaction expect it to close during the first quarter of 2026, pending the regulatory approval process and other closing conditions.

Perella Weinberg Partners LP is the financial adviser to Intuitive Machines, whose legal adviser is Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LL.

Barclays Capital is the financial adviser to Advent and Lanteris. Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Covington are legal advisers on the sell side.