Y Combinator grad Spacium raises $6.3M in capital expansion

Back in 2023, Ashi Dissanayake, co-founder of Spacium, was wearing shoes and used the top of his clothes dryer as a desk, strapping his legs inside the dryer. His computer was next to Tide Pods and he was surrounded by robotic arms, working late into the night with his co-founder, Reza Fetanat. Back then, the two worked in a small apartment in Ottawa.

Since then, they have moved to an office with real desks, passed through Y Combinator, and, today, announced a $6.3 million seed round led by Initialized Capital. The company is planning a demonstration project later this year, and Dissanayake said they have a “strong pipeline of customers.”

The two founders connected with the University of Ottawa because of their passion for space and collaborated to conduct research. “We build the rockets, the rockets, the flight systems, and the parachutes that will bring the rocket,” he said, adding that they put the samples in the rockets, shoot them up to 30,000 meters, and then send them. data back to Canadian labs.

As they worked on the research, Dissanayake and Fetanat realized that the “biggest obstacle” in the industry was the lack of alternative fuel production methods. Currently, the spacecraft must have all the fuel necessary for its mission. “And when the mission is over, the ship becomes a piece of junk,” he said.

For long missions or deep missions – like, say, colonizing Mars – companies will need to have fuel in space. “Our ultimate goal would be to build a super highway, where we have multiple refueling stations where a ship can stop, refuel, and travel,” he said.

Spacium is not the only company with this dream: Orbit Fab It is also working on the production of oil in space, and it has a history of several years. Additionally, the Japanese company Astroscale won a $25.5 million contract for the US Space Force to build a refueling vehicle.

But Dissanayake believes he has a competitive advantage. “We have developed a very unique system that allows us to store oil for a long time, which has never been done before,” he said, declining to give details.

Dissanayake has a long way to go, but he hopes that one day he will take a trip into space, look into the abyss, “and see our place where we are.”