Space Bandits: the space startup dataset
========================================

194 space startups, hand-curated since 2019.
Generated 2026-08-20 from https://www.spacebandits.io

FILES
  space-startups.csv         One row per company (194 rows).
  space-startup-funding.csv  One row per funding round (164 rows),
                             each with the source URL it was verified against.
  space-startups.json        The same data, nested, for anyone working in code.

LICENCE
  Free to use, including commercially, with attribution.
  Credit "Space Bandits" and link to https://www.spacebandits.io.
  That link is the entire price. Please do not strip it.

  Suggested citation:
    Space Bandits space startup dataset, 2026-08-20. https://www.spacebandits.io/data

EVENTS AND PEOPLE
  The JSON also carries, per company where we have them: dated company
  events and the team as {role, name}. An event's type is one of:
  funding, contract, product, company, regulatory, achievement,
  anomaly. (Funding rounds also live, with amounts and investors, in
  funding_rounds.)

  The rule that keeps the types mutually exclusive: paper or field.
  Paper events are money, ink and filings. Money to build (equity,
  grants) = funding; payment to deliver = contract, so an SBIR grant
  is funding and a CLPS task order is a contract. A product or
  service put on the market, or a flagship reveal the company then
  pursued = product. Changes to the company itself (listing,
  acquisition, merger, rebrand, pivot) = company. A licence, permit or
  spectrum grant = regulatory, its own type because in space these
  gate everything: Varda sat in orbit waiting on the FAA, and Gilmour,
  Isar and Skyrora each needed their country's first-ever launch
  approval. Field events are the
  hardware or service doing something in the world: to plan =
  achievement, off plan = anomaly. "anomaly" records the deviation
  without judgment: whether it was a setback or learning is yours to
  decide. Events are typed by the kind of fact, never the feeling: a
  record-breaking round is still funding, an IPO is still company.

  Curated events carry the source URL each was verified against.
  This layer is young and growing; funding rounds remain the most
  complete part of the record.

WHAT THE BLANKS MEAN
  Blank cells are deliberate. A blank total_funding_usd means no
  documented figure supports a total, not that the company raised
  nothing. We would rather ship a gap than a guess, so nothing here is
  estimated, modelled or inferred. Where public numbers conflict, or a
  "total raised" would mix equity with debt, government award ceilings
  or a founder's own money, the total stays blank.

  status is one of: active, dormant, acquired, shutdown, graduated.
  It answers one question only, "is this company still around?", so it
  stays deliberately coarse. Everything about how a company changed
  lives in its events, not here.
  "dormant" means no activity has been found for a long stretch and no
  wind-down has been documented either. It is a deliberate third answer
  to "is this company alive?", used instead of guessing.
  "graduated" means the company outgrew the startup label, usually by
  going public. It is still tracked because its history is useful. A
  company that later went private again is still graduated: the status
  is not a life stage it can fall back down.

  There is no "pivoted" status, on purpose. Companies that started in
  space and moved on keep their entry, because where a space company's
  people and money went is worth knowing. The move is recorded as a
  dated "company" event and in status_note. Read the timeline, not the
  status, to find it.

  record_updated is honest, not cosmetic. An old date means the record
  has not been revisited since then. Treat it accordingly.

CORRECTIONS
  hello@spacebandits.io. Verified corrections are fixed the same day.
  How the data is verified: https://www.spacebandits.io/how-we-verify