Significant changes are coming to ABL Space Systems. The leader of the 7-year-old startup took to social media last night to make a big announcement: The company will no longer be focusing on the commercial launch market but will be turning instead to missile defense.
ABL had been developing a small launch vehicle called RS1 and a mobile ground system designed to fit inside a shipping container, with aspirations to bring truly portable, responsive launch to the market for the first time. To that end, the startup invested substantial capital into developing tech in-house, including a novel rocket engine, and in infrastructure; they had three test sites, two factories, and a launch site across three different states.
This growth has come at a considerable cost: In total, ABL Space has raised $461 million, with over half of that coming in via a $372 million Series B round in 2021 that valued the company at $2.4 billion.
But the startup encountered difficulties actually getting RS1 off the ground. During the first flight test in January 2023, the rocket’s nine engines spontaneously shut down shortly after liftoff, leading to it falling back to Earth, hitting the launchpad and being destroyed on impact. Prior to the second flight campaign this past July, ABL said the rocket suffered a serious anomaly during preflight testing that led to a loss of the vehicle.
However, ABL founder and president Dan Piemont said in an announcement posted to X and LinkedIn that these failures “[advanced] our technology readiness.” Instead, he said that the reason the company decided to pivot was because of changes to the launch market. ABL did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for an interview.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen our ability to make a meaningful impact in the launch industry diminish,” Piemont said. “To succeed in such a demanding effort as scaling up an orbital launch program, you need deep motivation around your mission and potential impact, from many stakeholders. As the launch market matured, those motivations thinned and our path to making a big contribution as a commercial launch company narrowed considerably.”
Concurrently, Piemont says the company realized that the U.S. is poorly equipped to respond to missile threats: “We recognized that ABL’s technology could help to solve these problems by offering new capabilities with more test ranges, more frequent flights, and more creative R&D. We became convinced that to address these needs, a company would need to be singularly focused on the mission, rather than approaching it merely as an additional line of business.”
He added that ABL sees “considerable opportunity” to apply its existing IP, including the RS1 rocket, toward this new mission.
Missile defense is a major area of investment for the U.S. Department of Defense: The department’s fiscal year 2025 budget allocates $13.5 billion for missile defense programs, like tactical missile interceptors and counter-missile technology. Even a fraction of that funding could make it worthwhile for ABL — that is, if it can crack the notoriously challenging government sales environment.