Stoke Space's full-reusability bet: Nova assembled, $1.34B raised, launch late 2026

Stoke builds Nova, a fully reusable two-stage medium-lift rocket whose second stage integrates its engine into the vehicle body and uses a liquid-cooled heat shield, designed to return intact and fly again quickly.

Both stages of a medium-lift rocket can be recovered whole and refly quickly — prove the second stage first, land the booster later, undercut Falcon 9.

About $75M by late 2023 including a $65M Series A led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures; $100M Series B (Oct 2023); $260M Series C (Jan 2025) took the total to $480M; an extended Series D closed February 2026 took it to $1.34B; a ~$1B round at ~$9B pre-money was closing in August 2026 per Bloomberg.

Founded in 2019 by Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman, both ex-Blue Origin, Stoke went through Y Combinator's Winter 2021 cohort and raised about $75M, including a $65M Series A led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures. On 2023-09-17 its Hopper2 second-stage prototype flew 15 seconds to about 30 feet and landed vertically at Moses Lake, Washington, validating the unusual architecture: an oxygen-hydrogen engine integrated into the vehicle with thrusters around its circumference, with avionics, software and ground systems exercised in the loop. The US Space Force allocated Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral that year, and Stoke targeted orbit by 2025.

A $100M Series B followed in October 2023 and a $260M Series C in January 2025, funding engines, manufacturing and LC-14 activation. Nova's first stage completed proto-qualification in June 2026 after 46 structural tests at Moses Lake; in August 2026 Stoke reported first-stage engines finished and mated the payload module, second-stage tanks and Andromeda 2 engine for fit checks. NASA selected Stoke in June 2026 for an upper-stage re-entry partnership, while the first orbital flight slipped from 2025 to a late-2026 target.

Falcon 9 reuses only the booster; each flight still expends a new upper stage and fairing. Whole-vehicle recovery is where the next big cut in launch cost must come from.

Stoke validated the second stage — the part nobody had reused — with Hopper2's 2023 hop before scaling engines and pad work, so later capital backed demonstrated hardware.

The medium-lift niche between Electron-class small launchers and Falcon 9 is underserved, and it is exactly the segment squeezed by the launch-capacity crunch Bloomberg describes.

The liquid-cooled heat shield converts the classic re-entry problem into a refurbishment-free design choice, which is what 'aircraft-like frequency' of reflight actually requires.

Prove the riskiest architecture early: a 30-foot hop plus a novel heat shield carried Stoke to $1.34B before first orbital flight — investors price demonstrated hard problems, not slides.

As of 2026-09-02 Nova had not flown: its maiden Demo Flight is targeted for late 2026 from LC-14, with booster landing expected on later flights. Bloomberg reported Stoke was raising ~$1B at a ~$9B pre-money valuation, closing as early as August 2026, after the $860M Series D (February 2026) brought total funding to $1.34B. The company also holds a NASA upper-stage re-entry partnership and a Space Force-allocated pad; since no rocket has yet achieved full reusability, the bet rests on the first flight and on whether Nova's heat shield really refiles without refurbishment.