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“That’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re building what we’re building.”
Northwood's Portal antenna arrays look different from traditional satellite dishes. Credit: Northwood Space
A company that seeks to disrupt the way in which data from space is received and transmitted has found some key investors and customers.
On Tuesday morning Northwood Space announced that it has closed a $100 million Series B round of funding to support a rapid ramp-up in the deployment of its phased-array radar system, known as Portal. The company also said it has received a $49.8 million contract from the US Space Force to augment the Satellite Control Network, which provides telemetry and tracking for the military’s satellites.
“We made our last fundraise announcement in April of 2025, so less than a year, but there’s been a lot of activity and progress on the Northwood side that reflects the importance of ground as an enabler for pushing forward more capable missions on shorter timelines,” said Bridgit Mendler, co-founder and CEO of Northwood, during a media roundtable. “That’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re building what we’re building, is because we believe that there’s a lot of important capability in space that needs to be built faster, and the way to do that is through a vertically integrated ground network.”
Deploying across continents
The funding announcements cap a busy year for Northwood, which emerged from stealth as a small startup in February 2024. The company was founded on the premise that there is a bottleneck in the capability of commercial ground stations to download increasing amounts of data gathered by satellites in orbit, and that this will only get worse. Northwood and its investors are betting that the existing network of commercial ground stations, many of which were deployed a decade or longer ago, cannot keep up with the pace of new satellites arriving in orbit.
In June the company demonstrated its second-generation phased-array antenna, known as Portal. Instead of needing to point directly at their target to collect a signal, like a parabolic dish antenna, phased-array antennas produce a beam of radio waves that can “point” in different directions without moving the antenna. It can also communicate with multiple satellites, in multiple orbits, at a single time.
By the end of the year, Northwood, based in El Segundo, California, had shown the ability to build eight of these Portal arrays a month. And in January the company had deployed operational Portal antennas across two continents. These deployments, which comprise an area of 8 to 15 meters, have the equivalent capability of a 7-meter parabolic dish, said Griffin Cleverly, co-founder and chief technical officer of Northwood.
“Across our initial Portal sites, it will be a few dozen spacecraft that each of them can handle,” he said. “And then, as we get into 2027, with much more scale manufacturing, we’ll easily be able to handle hundreds of satellites with our network.”
Government seeks modern solutions
Northwood’s entry into the development of ground stations—there are about half a dozen major players in the industry, some long-established others new—came as the Space Force was looking to modernize its Satellite Control Network.
According to a government report published in 2023, the network makes 450 daily contacts with satellites and supports the launch and operations of these vehicles. The report found that the network faced “sustainment and obsolescence issues while demands on the system are increasing.”
The Space Force is seeking to address these issues as well as the proliferation of satellites in low-Earth orbit, and came to Northwood looking to scale up its system to meet these needs. Northwood began working with the Space Force in September.
Data volume will continue to grow
The company seeks to address both government and commercial customers with the Portal system and future antennas. One growth area much discussed in recent months has been orbital data centers, which would necessitate the movement of huge amounts of data to and from space. Mendler said Northwood was “enthusiastic” to support such initiatives.
“Our overall perspective on the space industry was that volume of data was going to go up, use cases were going to go up,” Mendler said of the reasons for founding Northwood.
“And that has definitely borne out, whether we’re talking about communications, which has also been surging, or manufacturing or energy or compute, all of these different use cases in space, there’s a lot of appetite to address them,” she added. “The way that we think about ourselves is someone who conceives of solutions for how to make that all happen and then is accountable to actually see them through.”
Northwood's Portal antenna arrays look different from traditional satellite dishes. Credit: Northwood Space
A company that seeks to disrupt the way in which data from space is received and transmitted has found some key investors and customers.
On Tuesday morning Northwood Space announced that it has closed a $100 million Series B round of funding to support a rapid ramp-up in the deployment of its phased-array radar system, known as Portal. The company also said it has received a $49.8 million contract from the US Space Force to augment the Satellite Control Network, which provides telemetry and tracking for the military’s satellites.
“We made our last fundraise announcement in April of 2025, so less than a year, but there’s been a lot of activity and progress on the Northwood side that reflects the importance of ground as an enabler for pushing forward more capable missions on shorter timelines,” said Bridgit Mendler, co-founder and CEO of Northwood, during a media roundtable. “That’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re building what we’re building, is because we believe that there’s a lot of important capability in space that needs to be built faster, and the way to do that is through a vertically integrated ground network.”
Deploying across continents
The funding announcements cap a busy year for Northwood, which emerged from stealth as a small startup in February 2024. The company was founded on the premise that there is a bottleneck in the capability of commercial ground stations to download increasing amounts of data gathered by satellites in orbit, and that this will only get worse. Northwood and its investors are betting that the existing network of commercial ground stations, many of which were deployed a decade or longer ago, cannot keep up with the pace of new satellites arriving in orbit.
In June the company demonstrated its second-generation phased-array antenna, known as Portal. Instead of needing to point directly at their target to collect a signal, like a parabolic dish antenna, phased-array antennas produce a beam of radio waves that can “point” in different directions without moving the antenna. It can also communicate with multiple satellites, in multiple orbits, at a single time.
By the end of the year, Northwood, based in El Segundo, California, had shown the ability to build eight of these Portal arrays a month. And in January the company had deployed operational Portal antennas across two continents. These deployments, which comprise an area of 8 to 15 meters, have the equivalent capability of a 7-meter parabolic dish, said Griffin Cleverly, co-founder and chief technical officer of Northwood.
“Across our initial Portal sites, it will be a few dozen spacecraft that each of them can handle,” he said. “And then, as we get into 2027, with much more scale manufacturing, we’ll easily be able to handle hundreds of satellites with our network.”
Government seeks modern solutions
Northwood’s entry into the development of ground stations—there are about half a dozen major players in the industry, some long-established others new—came as the Space Force was looking to modernize its Satellite Control Network.
According to a government report published in 2023, the network makes 450 daily contacts with satellites and supports the launch and operations of these vehicles. The report found that the network faced “sustainment and obsolescence issues while demands on the system are increasing.”
The Space Force is seeking to address these issues as well as the proliferation of satellites in low-Earth orbit, and came to Northwood looking to scale up its system to meet these needs. Northwood began working with the Space Force in September.
Data volume will continue to grow
The company seeks to address both government and commercial customers with the Portal system and future antennas. One growth area much discussed in recent months has been orbital data centers, which would necessitate the movement of huge amounts of data to and from space. Mendler said Northwood was “enthusiastic” to support such initiatives.
“Our overall perspective on the space industry was that volume of data was going to go up, use cases were going to go up,” Mendler said of the reasons for founding Northwood.
“And that has definitely borne out, whether we’re talking about communications, which has also been surging, or manufacturing or energy or compute, all of these different use cases in space, there’s a lot of appetite to address them,” she added. “The way that we think about ourselves is someone who conceives of solutions for how to make that all happen and then is accountable to actually see them through.”
