California’s K2 Space has established a satellite engineering hub in the Seattle area, joining the region’s thriving satellite business ecosystem.
The Pacific Northwest project will support the company’s mission to build larger, more powerful satellites for government and commercial customers. The satellites are manufactured at the K2 plant in Torrance, Calif. The firm also maintains a policy and strategy office in Washington, DC.
Since its founding in 2022, K2 Space has raised more than $500 million in capital and signed more than a billion dollars in contracts. While most satellite companies focus on miniaturization, K2 Space is going for satellite weight and power. K2 had its first “mega-class” satellite, called Gravitas, launched into orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in March. The two-ton, 20-kilowatt satellite carries undisclosed payload modules for multiple customers, including the Department of Defense.
That “go-big” trend is growing: Last month, for example, the US Space Force confirmed that K2 Space will be one of the providers of the military’s next-generation communications network. To serve the prospective market, K2 Space says it plans to produce hundreds of satellites a year by 2030.
“As we carefully evaluate our expansion plans to align with our next phase of growth, the Seattle location was a natural fit, given its enduring reputation as an aerospace and engineering hub,” said K2 Space CEO and founder Karan Kunjur in a news release. “From spaceflight and autonomous systems to the ground-level systems that drive our satellites’ most demanding missions, our team in Seattle will contribute to satellites that operate at the edge of what’s possible.”
Neel Kunjur, K2 Space’s chief technology officer and the company’s founder, said the company currently has close to 300 employees. K2 Space’s online job listings include 16 positions based in Seattle.
Seattle has already earned its place as America’s satellite city. More than half of the world’s operational satellites are built in the region, driven primarily by SpaceX’s Starlink manufacturing facility in Redmond. Satellites for the rival Amazon Leo constellation (formerly known as Project Kuiper) are produced near the factory in Kirkland.
Other satellite manufacturers in the region include Starcloud in Redmond, Xplore in Bellevue and Portal Space Systems in Bothell. South of Seattle, Tukwila serves as the home base for satellite manufacturing facilities operated by BlackSky (formerly LeoStella) and Starfish Space.
California-based Cowboy Space, a data center satellite company formerly known as Aetherflux, has an engineering office in the Seattle area. Another California company specializing in satellite-based computing, Sophia Space, also has a presence in Seattle.
Jeff Bezos’ space venture Blue Origin, headquartered in Kent, Wash., is preparing satellite projects including Terawave and a proposed data constellation called Project Sunrise. Blue Origin’s job listing suggests that facilities in the Seattle, Los Angeles and Denver areas will play a role in those jobs.
