A Falcon 9 rockets launches a Starlink mission on January 20, 2021. SpaceX
Private investment in space companies hit $1.9 billion in the first quarter, according to a report on Wednesday by New York-based firm Space Capital.
"The trend towards larger late-stage deals continued in Q1, with the top 10 rounds accounting for 77% of total investment," Space Capital managing partner Chad Anderson wrote in the report.
"At the early-stage, we're seeing larger deal sizes at higher valuations and looser terms as VCs push to deploy the historical amounts of capital they raised in 2020," he noted.
The quarterly Space Capital report divides investment in the industry into three technology categories.
The first, infrastructure, includes what many would consider space companies, such as firms that build rockets and satellites.
The other two categories are application and distribution. The former includes space-dependent services, like ride hailing or navigation, while the latter represents terrestrial-based technologies that connect to space-based networks.
In total, Space Capital tracks 1,480 companies with $186.7 billion in cumulative global equity investment since 2012 across its three categories.
The broad analysis of the space economy reflects Anderson's underlying thesis, and a phrase—increasingly repeated in the industry—he coined to represent it: "In the same way that every company today is a technology company, every company of tomorrow will be a space company."
Space infrastructure 'very likely' to break above $10 billion this year Space Capital
The bulk of the investment in the space infrastructure segment went to rocket builders and satellite companies, with $1.1 billion and $900 million, respectively.