{"id":19161,"date":"2016-11-29T22:52:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T14:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/starburst-venture-raises-200-million-for-aerospace-startups-and-heads-for-seattle\/"},"modified":"2016-11-29T22:52:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T14:52:51","slug":"starburst-venture-raises-200-million-for-aerospace-startups-and-heads-for-seattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/starburst-venture-raises-200-million-for-aerospace-startups-and-heads-for-seattle\/","title":{"rendered":"Starburst Venture raises $200 million for aerospace startups (and heads for Seattle)"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_292583\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-292583\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-292583\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161129-spacex-630x460.jpg\" alt=\"SpaceX launch\" width=\"630\" height=\"460\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161129-spacex-630x460.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161129-spacex.jpg 644w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-292583\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Starburst Ventures aims to back startups that can follow in SpaceX\u2019s footsteps. (SpaceX Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On the eve of its first event in Seattle, Starburst Accelerator says it has set up a $200 million venture fund to invest in aviation and aerospace startups over the next three years.<\/p>\n<p>Starburst Venture, formed in collaboration with Singapore-based Leonie Hill Capital, will focus on early and growth-stage companies, with the first investments due to be made in the first quarter of 2017, the fund\u2019s founders said today in a news release.<\/p>\n<p>The investment team will be mainly based in San Francisco, but will also leverage Starburst Accelerator\u2019s existing operations in Los Angeles, Paris, Munich and Singapore.<\/p>\n<p>Starburst Accelerator was founded in 2012 by Francois Chopard, a former Airbus engineer and aerospace strategy consultant. Since then, it has teamed up with more than 100 companies to provide a boost for&nbsp;business development.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe appreciate the vote of confidence that&nbsp;Leonie Hill Capital, our anchor investor, has placed&nbsp;in&nbsp;Starburst Accelerator, a testament to the immense amount of work and focus that&nbsp;our entire&nbsp;team has contributed&nbsp;to the business&nbsp;over the last few years,\u201d Chopard said today.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Bloomberg Starburst Interview\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JsX8NmrWCR8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Starburst focuses on commercial space ventures as well as aviation frontiers such as flying cars, supersonic jets, electric aircraft and drones. The technologies in Starburst\u2019s portfolio also include artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, new materials and data analytics.<\/p>\n<p>Starburst gives its startups a showcase at accelerator events, such as the one taking place at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight on Wednesday. \u201cWe\u2019ve been referred to as a sort of Shark Tank for aerospace,\u201d Starburst co-founder Vandad Espahbodi told Tech in Asia in September.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe way we\u2019ve set up our model basically incentivizes the industry to say, what is this buzz about Elon Musk? What\u2019s the deal with SpaceX? How real is all of this?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Among the startups taking part in&nbsp;Seattle\u2019s Starburst shark tank are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Aerostrat<\/strong>, based in Seattle. Next-generation airline maintenance software.<\/li>\n<li><strong>MatterFab<\/strong>, based in Seattle. Provider of 3-D metal printing services.<\/li>\n<li><strong>RBC Signals<\/strong>, based in Seattle: Real-time satellite communication for spacecraft in low Earth orbit.<\/li>\n<li><strong>BOXARR<\/strong>, based in Bristol, Britain. Software applications for interdependent systems management.<\/li>\n<li><strong>DroneBase<\/strong>, based in Los Angeles. Globally scaled, on-demand drone services for enterprise customers.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Electric Power Systems<\/strong>, based in Industry, Calif. Next-generation batteries and energy storage systems.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Evigia<\/strong>, based in Ann Arbor, Mich. Integrated sensors and wireless tracking systems for defense, industrial and consumer product applications.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Identify3D<\/strong>, based in San Francisco: Intellectual property protection, quality assurance and data security for digital manufacturing.<\/li>\n<li><strong>iQ3<\/strong>, based in Woburn, Mass. Cloud-based, virtual-reality web conferencing.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Koolock<\/strong>, based in San Francisco. Weather forecasting facilitated by nanosatellites.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pierce Aerospace<\/strong>, based in Carmel, Ind. Cloud-based logbooks for commercial drone operations.<\/li>\n<li><strong>WiN MS<\/strong>, based in Orsey, France. Breakdown locator assistance tool for aeronautical maintenance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>A previous version of this report provided an outdated list of potential \u201cshark tank\u201d participants. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>For more information about Wednesday\u2019s event at the Museum of Flight, check out the Starburst website. Support&nbsp;for the Seattle event is being provided by KippsDeSanto, the Boeing Co., the Washington State Department of Commerce\u2019s Choose Washington program and the French-American Chamber of Commerce, Pacific Northwest.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starburst Ventures aims to back startups that can follow in SpaceX\u2019s footsteps. (SpaceX Photo) On the eve of its first event in Seattle, Starburst Accelerator says it has set up a $200 million venture fund to invest in aviation and aerospace startups over the next three years. Starburst Venture, formed in collaboration with Singapore-based Leonie [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[39,291,5480,5482,273],"class_list":["post-19161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aerospace","tag-commercial-space","tag-starburst","tag-startup-accelerator","tag-venture-capital"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}