Space Insurance Startup Charter Space Raises $5M Seed Round
A space insurance startup called Charter Space has raised a $5 million seed round to grow its budding space insurance business. The El Segundo, California-based company announced the funding on Wednesday, September 30, 2026.
Charter Space is a finalist in last year’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield. It says it already services over 50 companies across the U.S. space and defense industrial base following the launch of its nationally licensed insurance brokerage in May.
Insurance-focused Crystal Venture Partners led the round. Fintech investors QED and Blank Ventures, early-stage venture firm Hustle Fund, and Gaingels—an investment syndicate that backs startups with underrepresented leadership—also participated.
Charter Space has raised $8 million to date. It will use the proceeds of the seed round to grow its sales organization and its insurance offerings.
Why Space Insurance Is Still Rare
Things go wrong in the space industry all the time, so companies constantly plan contingencies. But insuring objects that go to space is still a rare practice.
Charter Space’s founder and CEO, Yuk Chi Chan, believes this is largely because of the high cost of underwriting something like a satellite. As Charter Space explains on its website, a common experience for space companies is that regular insurers “heard a bunch of scary science words and freaked out.”
When Chan started Charter Space with co-founder Yukun Yin, they set out to build a centralized software for aerospace engineering. The plan was to bring together the technical, manufacturing, and test data for customers. But Chan realized there was a lot of potential value in plugging that data into the underwriting process.
“We want more satellites to get insured, because that means that everything as a whole is much, much safer,” Chan said last year. “If we can proliferate insurance coverage, one, that’s good for the space industrial base, a lot more companies have a safety net… But it’s also a lot healthier for the overall economy, because then that encourages global investment from different alternative capital sources.”
“You’re not solely reliant on VC or some growth equity,” he added. “You can start bringing in debt, credit, lots of different options that you have in any other sort of advanced industry.”
How the Space Industry Created New Demand
Space companies don’t have many options for financial services because space used to have very few players. The industry was until recently dominated by governments and defense contractors. After the Cold War, those players tended to move slowly and conservatively.
But the boom of new space companies over the last decade changed that. It was spurred in large part by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lowering the cost of launching things into orbit. That shift means there is now enough demand for companies like Charter Space to build and grow.
There are new players making satellites and spaceships. There are also new launch providers competing to fill the void that SpaceX is about to leave when it retires the Falcon 9.
Investors See Insurance as Critical Infrastructure
“Charter Space sits at the intersection of two enormous opportunities: the rapid growth of the commercial space economy and the need for a modern approach to understanding and insuring the increasingly complex risks that accompany that growth,” said Jonathan Crystal, managing partner of Crystal Venture Partners, in a statement.
“Insurance is critical infrastructure for a strong and sustainable space industry, and we believe Charter Space is building the platform that will help the space economy scale safely and sustainably.”
Michael Yaworsky, the commissioner of insurance regulation in Florida, still the leading launch location in the country, said insurance is “the precondition for growth in space.” He said it opens the door for more local investment.
“The state that leads on insurance will be the destination for capital investing in the industries of the future, and lay the foundation for continued American greatness for the next 250 years and beyond,” he said in a statement.
What Comes Next for Charter Space
Charter Space will use the new funding to grow its sales organization and its insurance offerings. Other products on the table include coverage for “novel mission concepts.”
Those concepts include space-based nuclear power, lunar missions, and in-space servicing of other spacecraft. Each represents a new category of risk that traditional insurers have been slow to underwrite.
For a space insurance startup, that gap is the opportunity. As more satellites, lunar missions, and servicing vehicles reach orbit, the demand for coverage that understands the technology will only grow.
