Fortastra, a Southern California-based startup led by a former SpaceX engineer, has closed a $30 million fundraising round to provide “bodyguards in space” that can help protect civilian and defense satellites.
Fortastra, founded last year in Torrance near Los Angeles, designs maneuverable spacecraft to protect orbital satellite infrastructure for the US and its allies. The new funding round comes after last month’s disclosure of a US weapon in space to counter Russia, China and other potential adversaries, amid fears that guidance, communications and other systems could be exposed to attack.
“There’s an acknowledgment that space, while it was a fairly peaceful domain at one point, is actually fairly contested,” Mike Smayda , Fortastra chief executive officer and founder, said in an interview. There is “hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars’ worth of value in space. And generally things that go to space are launched unprotected.”
Two Fortastra prototype satellites, dubbed Watchdog V0, rode an Oct. 1 Transporter-18 launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. out of Vandenberg Space Force Base, the startup’s first to leave Earth. The new funding round will allow Fortastra, which currently has only 18 employees, to scale up production, Smayda said. He declined to disclose a valuation based on the new funding round.
Smayda said the goal is to move beyond a “bodyguard-type framework” and instead develop “more zone defense, where we’re building a lot of these and they’re massively proliferated across different orbits and orbital regimes,” he said. “We’re talking hundreds, if not thousands, of more satellites.”
Aerospace and defense startups have experienced a resurgence in Southern California, buoyed by the increase in civilian and government spending, building on the region’s history as a wellspring of engineering and innovation dating back to World War II. Anduril Industries Inc., Rocket Lab Corp. and Relativity Space Inc. are among the multibillion-dollar regional aerospace companies that have started in the last decade.
US venture capital funding for space and defense startups climbed to $32.6 billion so far this year, up from $16.8 billion in all of 2025, according to PitchBook. More than $13 billion, or 40%, of this year’s funding has gone to firms based in Southern California.
Many former SpaceX employees, who remained in California after Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk relocated his firm to Texas, have gone on to start companies of their own, taking advantage of the region’s deep engineering and manufacturing talent base as well as its proximity to Silicon Valley capital and technology.
Smayda spent five years at SpaceX, formerly headquartered in Hawthorne, California, working on the capabilities for entry, descent and landing of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. In 2018, he co-founded hypersonic aircraft company Hermeus , where he was chief product officer.
First In, a venture capital fund that specializes in security technology and advanced manufacturing, led Fortastra’s new funding round. Other participants in the round include Upfront Ventures, Space Capital, Rsquared, Side Door Ventures and ATX Venture Partners. It follows a December Fortastra announcement of an initial $8 million round led by Upfront, with participation from Generational Partners, Forward Deployed Venture Capital, Wave Function Ventures, and Bloomberg Beta, a VC firm backed by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.
Smayda declined to detail what types of defensive capabilities his Watchdog V0 spacecraft would potentially deploy, but likened them to bodyguards on Earth protecting a high-net-worth person when someone pulls a knife.
“Your bodyguard’s probably going to go intercept that person and kind of evaluate the situation,” he said. “Then ideally that person goes away because they don’t want any trouble and they don’t want to be intercepted. And then, if they do wish to do harm or something unwanted, then the bodyguard can handle it.”