UK Government invests £20m in Orbex
January 29, 2025
By Chris Forrester

The UK government has invested £20 million (€23.8m) for an equity stake in Orbex Space, a start-up rocket launcher. This current round of fund-raising (the ‘D’ round) has also seen cash put up by Denmark’s EIFO fund, as well as Octopus Ventures and others.
The UK cash comes from its Department for Science, Innovation & Technology. The plan is for Orbex to launch small satellite payloads to low Earth orbit. Its first flight of the rocket is expected later this year.
Orbex recently announced its new CTO, Andy Bradford, as it entered the final preparations of the development of our advanced, low-carbon, high-performance micro-launcher, Orbex Prime.
Orbex is a UK-based aerospace company that is developing a small commercial orbital rocket called Prime. It is headquartered in Forres, Moray, in Scotland and has subsidiaries in Denmark and Germany.
In April 2024, it was reported that the company received $20.7 million in a Series D funding round, with the bulk of the funds going towards development of the Prime launch vehicle. In November 2024, Orbex announced that the first launch of Prime would be conducted from SaxaVord Spaceport instead of Sutherland.
European Spaceflight reported on January 27th comments from the UK Space Agency’s Director of Launch, Matthew Archer, who stated that it is “essential” for the country to participate in the European Launcher Challenge to ensure it continues to build on its efforts to develop sovereign launch capabilities. His comments also appeared to indicate that the country would be supporting Orbex in its bid to compete in the ESA initiative.