Fully reusable rockets need more than clever engineering. They need cash, and Stoke Space has just collected another tranche of it. The Kent, Washington company completed the initial closing of a $1B Series E co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, with Y Combinator, Woven Capital and others joining in.
The raise lifts Stoke’s lifetime haul to $2.3B. Chief executive Andy Lapsa says the money pays for production scale, higher flight frequency and development of the second-generation Nova Block 2, a vehicle designed to carry 15 metric tons to low Earth orbit, slightly more than SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
Stoke is chasing the industry’s hardest prize: a rocket where both the booster and the upper stage come back for reuse. Its answer to reentry heat is unusual, pumping super-cooled liquid hydrogen through the vehicle’s shielding as an active cooling system that has been tested extensively on the ground.
The first vehicle, Nova Pathfinder, is slated to fly in early 2027 and has already sold launch contracts. Lapsa targets Nova Block 2 for 2029, around when Elon Musk has said Falcon 9 will retire, a timing gap Stoke hopes to exploit with launch-hungry satellite operators.
The ambition is expensive. SpaceX has spent well over $10B on Starship alone. Stoke’s pitch to customers is that it will stay a pure launch provider, never competing with its own riders for payload space the way a fully booked Starship might.
