Space companies are going public again. In June, Voyager Technologies conducted an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $440 million, much of which will be used to support its proposed Starlab commercial space station. A few weeks later, Firefly Aerospace announced its intent to conduct an IPO, one that could raise more than $630 million for the launch and spacecraft developer.
Both companies elected to take the traditional, more rigorous IPO approach to going public, rather than merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) as many space companies tried several years ago. A few companies, like Rocket Lab, benefitted from those deals, but many more stumbled.
The situation has been different in Japan’s growing commercial space sector. With SPACs not available, there has been a small but steady stream of companies that have taken traditional paths to go public. They include satellite servicing company Astroscale, lunar lander developer ispace and radar imaging companies iQPS and Synspective.
Axelspace, which is working on a constellation of optical imaging satellites, plans to join them on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with an IPO scheduled for Aug. 13.
At the Spacetide conference in Tokyo July 8, the chief executives of the four space companies that already have gone public gathered to discuss the IPO process. It was a rare gathering of those executives, working largely in different parts of the space industry but united by being public companies.
“It’s like the planets aligned,” said Nobu Okada, CEO of Astroscale.
A key question was why each in the group decided to go public. Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, said his company found it difficult to raise money in private markets for its lunar landers.
“As quickly as possible, we wanted to IPO,” he recalled. The company started preparations for an IPO in 2019 that finally took place in 2023.
“The IPO was not the goal,” he said. “What we wanted to do was raise funds.”
Others offered similar explanations, concluding that an IPO was the best way to raise funds for capital-intensive businesses given a lack of large private investment opportunities.
“It had to be one of the options, otherwise we can’t scale up the business,” said Motoyuki Arai, CEO of Synspective, which needed to raise funds to build out its constellation of radar imaging satellites.
“The technology was there, but we needed the capital,” said Shunsuke Onishi, CEO of iQPS, which is also developing a radar imaging constellation.
IPOs gave the companies a way to raise money when private markets were less willing to do so, but they also created new challenges. Much of that has involved dealing with investors who are less interested in the companies’ long-term visions — like cleaning up low Earth orbit or establishing a presence on the moon — and focused more on near-term profitability.
“They were more patient prior to the IPO,” Arai said of investors. Now, he said Synspective has more diverse investors with different motivations. “We need to talk to them all at once, but it is unclear who we are addressing.”
“Before the IPO, investors were willing to wait,” said Okada. Now, he said, “investors want to see numbers. They are only interested in figures and numbers.”
None have experienced that more than Hakamada, who has seen ispace’s stock rise and fall based on the fortunes of its two lunar lander missions. When its second mission crashed attempting a landing in early June, the stock price cratered, dropping nearly 30% the next morning.
“This is beyond our control, the share price,” he said. “I believe there is a big potential for ispace, but it will take time.”
None expressed regret about going public, and argued that it was an inevitable part of the growth of Japan’s space industry.
“Ten years ago, when we wanted to do something in space, there was no one to talk to,” said Onishi. “Going forward, what will happen is that people who come up with new ideas will come to us.”
This article first appeared in the August 2025 issue of SpaceNews Magazine with the title “Foust Forward: Land of the rising IPO.”