SAN FRANCISCO – Mantis Space, a New Mexico startup planning a constellation to supply solar power to spacecraft, emerged from stealth March 12 with $10 million in seed funding.
“We are building a constellation of satellites that deliver power directly to solar arrays that exist in the market today and bringing products to market that tap in that infrastructure at a more advanced level than current solar arrays,” Mantis Space CEO Eric Truitt told <em>SpaceNews. “It’s important to think about what power looks like now and what power looks like in the future.”
Rule 1 Ventures and Montauk Capital, which incubated Mantis Space in its venture studio, led the seed round. With money raised, Mantis Space will focus primarily on expanding its 20-person workforce.
New Mexico and the city of Albuquerque awarded about $24 million to Mantis Space, founded in 2025 in Georgia, to move into its a 2,000-square-meter headquarters and manufacturing hub in Albuquerque. Mantis also is establishing an office in Silicon Valley “for ex-Google, Apple and Meta folks with significant experience,” Truitt said.
Pain Point
Throughout his career, Truitt, former Terran Orbital chief solutions officer and co-founder, PredaSAR chief solutions officer, and BlueHalo vice president of mission solutions and growth, always saw satellite power as a significant pain point.
Many satellites in low-Earth orbit are unable to access solar energy about a third of the time because they are operating in Earth’s shadow.
“We design around it. We fly around it. We make all these concessions, but the reality is we’re putting this Band-Aid on the problem,” Truitt said.
Mantis Space’s orbital power constellation, operating in a low medium-Earth orbit, is designed to solve the problem by transmitting power to satellites.
“The impact of power infrastructure is you get more done in orbit,” Truitt said. You get more data. You can move faster, stay in mission longer and fly in orbits that matter more.”
Adm. James Winnefeld Jr., former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Rule 1 Ventures general partner, said in a statement, “As the orbital economy matures, the limiting factor shifts from launch to performance. Mantis Space is addressing one of the last unbuilt layers of space infrastructure.”
Launch Options
Mantis Space will build payloads and optical systems to deliver power but not satellites. The company is not yet ready to name a spacecraft manufacturing partner nor to disclose satellite dimensions.
While the satellites will be large, Truitt said, they will fit on SpaceX, Firefly Aerospace, Rocket Lab, Blue Origin and Relativity launch vehicles. “We don’t have to wait for Starship,” he added.
Mantis Leadership
Truitt founded Mantis Space with Hugh Wyman Howard III, a former National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency operations director, and Jeremy Scheerer, who served as MapLarge vice president for defense systems. Howard is Mantis Space chairman and chief strategy officer and Scheerer is the chief operating officer. The three Mantis Space founders are U.S. military veterans.
John Sandusky, who led space, solar and laser programs at Sandia National Laboratory, serves as Mantis Space chief engineer. Greg Brady, who helped design optical systems for Apple Face ID, is the optical engineering director. And Quentin Diduck, a former Google engineer focused on MicroLED technology, is Mantis Space’s electrical engineering director.