San Francisco-area start-up Astra is going to be the next publicly traded space stock, as well as the first that’s dedicated to orbital rocket launches.
Astra announced on Monday that it is merging with special purpose acquisition company Holicity to go public in a deal that values the rocket company at a $2.1-billion enterprise value. Astra will list on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol ASTR when the deal closes, which is expected in the second quarter.
Said CEO Chris Kemp, "We’re seeing hundreds of companies that want to get from anywhere on Earth to anywhere in space on their schedule — not wait years to get a lot of things to one place. So we’re really focused on building a much smaller rocket, produced in much higher volume, launched from a much larger number of locations."
The rocket start-up in December became the latest private company to reach space after its Rocket 3.2 vehicle launched from Kodiak, Alaska. Although the rocket came just shy of orbit, Kemp told reporters that the mission "far exceeded our team’s expectations."
Astra was incorporated in October 2016. It has raised about $100 million before the SPAC deal, from investors including Advance (the investment arm of the family of the late billionaire S.I. Newhouse), ACME Capital, Airbus Ventures, Canaan Partners and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff.
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