Fully reusable rockets — both stages — built the SpaceX-way by SpaceX alumni
HQ: Kent, WA, United States | Founded: 2019 | Employees: ~500 (est.) | Stage: Late Stage VC (~$9B reported, 2026) | Website: https://www.stokespace.com
Stoke Space was founded in 2019 in Kent, Washington by Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman — Lapsa an 11-year SpaceX veteran who led propulsion development on the Merlin engine line and left convinced the next frontier was full reusability of both rocket stages. While every other SpaceX competitor (Rocket Lab, Relativity, Firefly) pursues partially reusable boosters, Stoke went directly at the unsolved problem: bringing the upper stage home intact. Its solution is technically audacious — a second-stage heat shield that actively cools itself by flowing cryogenic liquid hydrogen through the vehicle's skin during reentry, turning the hottest surface in rocketry into a regenerative cooling system, exhaustively ground-tested per CEO Lapsa.
The Nova rocket reflects the same first-principles thinking: liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engines on both stages, a 3-ton payload to low Earth orbit for the debut Nova Pathfinder — which would make it the largest debut vehicle of any U.S. rocket maker — and a 15-ton Nova Block 2 targeted for 2029, slightly out-lifting Falcon 9, timed deliberately against Musk's announced Falcon 9 retirement.
The capital tempo matches the ambition: a $260M Series C (January 2025), a $510M Series D at ~$2B (October 2025), and a $1B Series E (September 2026) led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital with General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovative Technology, Washington Harbour Partners, Woven Capital, and Y Combinator — $2.3B total, at a reported ~$9B valuation. Infrastructure is in place: stage testing at Moses Lake, Washington, and Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral — the pad that launched John Glenn — activated for Pathfinder's first flight, targeted early 2027. The U.S. Space Force has also selected Stoke for a multiple-award program reported at up to $5.6B.
Stoke Space is the most credible attempt to out-SpaceX SpaceX: while Rocket Lab and Relativity chase reusable boosters, Stoke is going straight for the fully-reusable two-stage rocket — the thing even Starship hasn't achieved — with a hydrogen-fueled design and an active-cooling heat shield that's a genuinely novel solution to reentry's hardest problem. The capital tempo tells the story: $260M, then $510M, then a $1B Series E within 20 months, totaling $2.3B, with Point72 and Spark leading at a reported ~$9B valuation. First flight in early 2027 would land just as Falcon 9 phases out — a supply-demand mismatch no launch provider has ever inherited. The risks are rocketry's brutal base rate (first flights fail), hydrogen's operational difficulty, and the fact that SpaceX's missteps don't make physics easier — but if Pathfinder reaches orbit on schedule, Stoke becomes the most important launch company since Falcon 9.
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