🚀 Karman+ Raises $20M to Mine Asteroids (Yes, Really)

Space mining. It sounds like sci-fi nonsense or the plot of a questionable Netflix original, but Karman+ just raised $20M to make it a reality. Their plan? Send autonomous spacecraft to asteroids, mine materials, extract water, and refuel satellites in orbit. 🤖⛏️🪐

Because why launch stuff from Earth when you can steal resources from space rocks instead?

---

💰 Who’s Funding This Space Heist?

Leading this YOLO-in-space mission:

• Plural (London) & Hummingbird (Antwerp) 🏦
• HCVC (Paris) & angel investors 👼
• Lookout’s Kevin Mahaffey & Karman+ CEO Teun van den Dries himself 💸

The team thinks they can slash costs of asteroid missions from $1B to just $10M per trip. Investors were like, “Sounds crazy, but let’s do it.” 🚀💰

---

🪐 How It Works (In Theory)

1. Launch a spacecraft 🛰️ → 🚀 Fly millions of miles to an asteroid
2. Mine regolith (asteroid dirt) ⛏️ → 💦 Extract water from it
3. Use water as rocket fuel ⛽ → 🔥 Refuel satellites & space tugs
4. Profit. 💰 (Hopefully.)

The big idea? If they can harvest materials in space, space travel becomes cheaper—no need to launch tons of fuel and supplies from Earth.

Sounds great. Super easy. Barely an inconvenience. Except…

---

🤔 The (Many) Challenges

🚧 Problem 1: Their spacecraft doesn’t exist yet. (Minor detail.)
🚧 Problem 2: Asteroids are moving targets, orbiting the sun.
🚧 Problem 3: Not all satellites even use water-based fuel (oops).
🚧 Problem 4: NASA spent $1B per asteroid mission before. Karman+ says they can do it for $10M. We’ll see.

Oh, and they’ll need to raise more money before launch. Because, obviously.

---

👨‍🚀 Why Do This Instead of, You Know, SaaS?

Karman+ CEO Teun van den Dries built and sold a real estate SaaS startup for $290M. Instead of coasting on that, he decided:

“I could optimize another SaaS company… or I could mine asteroids.”

Because space is cooler than spreadsheets.

Co-founder Daynan Crull (a data scientist turned “mission architect”) joined him. They picked asteroid mining because:

🚀 Fusion was too mainstream (and already raised $5B).
🪐 Asteroids are easier to reach than the Moon (apparently).
💰 Mining space rocks could be cheaper than launching resources from Earth.

---

🗓️ What’s Next?

• Build an actual spacecraft 🏗️ (kinda important).
• Test mining tech before their first mission in 2027 ⏳.
• Raise more funding. Because space is expensive.

Karman+ is taking things one step at a time, but their investors love their skeptical, realistic approach (unlike some of those “move fast and break things” software startups).

Will it work? TBD. But one thing’s for sure: asteroid mining is now officially a startup category.

🚀 Space is getting weird. And we’re here for it. 🛸💎