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Rocket Lab Raises $140M As Value Soars Above $1B

Huntington Beach-based aerospace manufacturer Rocket Lab selected NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the eastern shore of Virginia as its first U.S. launch pad.

Then it announced it’s raised $140 million in Series E funding led by Australia-based Sovereign Wealth Fund, also known as Future Fund, and with participation from VC hotshots that include Khosla Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. The company has so far raised $288 million.

Last week it said its valuation has soared to more than $1 billion. It’s winning raves from its investors.

“Rocket Lab is a truly remarkable company,” Khosla Ventures Chief Technology Officer Sven Strohband said in a statement. He said the company’s made “record time” going from its initial engine program to its first launch to factory production to the start of commercial operations.

“We see hundreds of start-ups gearing up to replace billion-dollar mainframes in Geosynchronous Orbit with constellations of cheaper, faster, better micro-sats,” David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners, who serves on Rocket Lab’s board, said in the statement. “Rocket Lab alone now provides the predictable, frequent and affordable launch capability critical for this new ecosystem.”

The Business Journal reported in August that the company was scouting potential sites, such as Wallops, Cape Canaveral in Florida, Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Lompoc. It assessed them on a range of criteria, including anticipated pad-construction cost and time frame; regulatory lead times; and operational costs.

The site will serve as Rocket Lab’s second dedicated launch complex. Its Launch Complex-1 in New Zealand is the world’s only private orbital launch site.

The company plans to launch more than 130 missions a year combined from the two sites, serving both U.S. government customers and the private sector in smaller satellite launches.

Rocket Lab is working with the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority to build a pad and infrastructure tailored to its Electron launch vehicle, which last year became the first to reach space from a private launch site.

In January, a test flight for four customers put a payload into orbit that included one weather satellite and two imaging satellites.

As part of the project, Rocket Lab will develop a Launch Vehicle Integration and Assembly Facility in the Wallops Research Park that will also feature a control room connected to the New Zealand site, as well as dedicated customer facilities.

It says the Virginia site will create about 30 jobs immediately and expand to 100 as launch frequencies increase. The expansion will also provide a boost to its Huntington Beach operations as it continues to scale its Electron rocket production there, the company said.

Rocket Lab, established in 2006, employs more than 220, the majority in New Zealand.

Chief Executive Peter Beck, who’s considered a founding father of New Zealand’s developing space program, expanded operations to Huntington Beach about two years ago. A $75 million Series D round last year led by San Francisco-based Data Collective put it in unicorn status.

Marvell Slashes Jobs

Marvell Technology Group Ltd.’s cost-cutting measures following its $6 billion takeover of rival Silicon Valley-based chipmaker Cavium Inc. have spilled into Orange County.

The company slashed 35 jobs at its Irvine location, according to a filing with the state Economic Development Department. The cuts were listed under the Cavium brand, which it acquired in July.

Marvell, which has its operational base in Santa Clara, has shed 131 jobs in California alone since July, according to state filings.

The company had 110 employees at its Irvine offices through April, good enough to rank it eighth on the Business Journal’s annual chipmaker industry tally.

It hasn’t revealed where the job cuts are and whether they include legacy employees from QLogic Corp., the Aliso Viejo-based networking products maker that Cavium acquired in 2016 for $1 billion. It’s one of several big global consolidations over the years that have affected local employment in the key chip sector here, still home to sizeable operations of Broadcom, Skyworks and TowerJazz.

QLogic, founded in 1994, made switches, adapter cards and other electronics used to speed up the flow of data.

Green Light for Texas

Anaheim-based Econolite Group Inc., which builds traffic-management systems, appointed Douglas Wiersig to the newly created position of vice president.

He’ll focus on business development and program consultancy, primarily in Texas, as part of the company’s expansion plans.

Wiersig served as director of transportation and public works for the city of Fort Worth for eight years and has held other executive positions managing transportation and infrastructure programs in the private and public sectors, including a stint as director of the Cobb County Department of Transportation in Georgia.

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