加州初创公司Xona正在低地球轨道建设卫星导航网络，该公司以24.5亿美元估值完成了2.5亿美元融资。Xona周四表示，本轮D轮融资由史蒂夫·尤尔韦松的Future Ventures领投。
Xona, a California startup building a satellite navigation network in low Earth orbit, has raised $250 million at a $2.45 billion valuation. Steve Jurvetson’s Future Ventures led the Series D, Xona said on Thursday.
此轮融资距离上一轮1.7亿美元的C轮融资仅过去七个月。这使得Xona自2019年以来的总融资额超过5.7亿美元。据《福布斯》报道，Future Ventures在本轮投入了7850万美元。
The round comes seven months after a $170 million Series C. It takes Xona’s total funding since 2019 past $570 million. Future Ventures put in $78.5 million, Forbes reported.
Xona联合创始人兼首席执行官布莱恩·曼宁对《福布斯》表示：“我们年初时基本上只有一个空仓库，现在我们已经拥有了一座运转正常的卫星工厂。”
“We started the year with technically an empty warehouse, and now we have a functional satellite factory,” Brian Manning, Xona’s co-founder and chief executive, told Forbes.
曾是SpaceX工程师的曼宁表示，公司原本没有计划这么快再次融资。他说，是在需求激增之后才决定融资的。
Manning, a former SpaceX engineer, said the company had not planned to raise again so soon. It did so after a surge in demand, he said.
作为GPS的商业竞争对手，Xona的网络名为Pulsar，其设计目标是与美国政府运营的GPS并行运行。该公司称，Pulsar的信号强度最高可达GPS的100倍，精度可达厘米级。该公司表示，这些信号能够抵抗干扰，并且可以覆盖到室内接收器。
A commercial rival to GPS Xona’s network, called Pulsar, is built to run alongside GPS, which the US government operates. The company says Pulsar’s signals are up to 100 times more powerful than GPS and accurate to the centimetre. It says they resist jamming and can reach receivers indoors.
Xona表示，数十亿台设备依赖的信号可能被干扰或欺骗。该公司还称，升级政府系统既缓慢又昂贵。
Billions of devices rely on signals that can be jammed or spoofed, Xona said. Updating government systems is slow and costly, it added.
曼宁在公司博客文章中写道，其测试卫星Pulsar-0于去年升空。此后，Xona已进行了500多次传输，并展示出优于两厘米的精度。他表示，现有的商用接收器无需更改硬件即可接收该信号。
Its test satellite, Pulsar-0, went up last year. Since then Xona has run more than 500 transmissions and shown accuracy better than two centimetres, Manning wrote in a company blog post. He said existing commercial receivers can pick up the signal without hardware changes.
今年8月，美国联邦通信委员会批准了Xona的星座。该公司称，这是首个也是唯一一个允许私营导航网络与政府系统并行运营的此类许可证。
In August, the Federal Communications Commission authorised Xona’s constellation. The company calls it the first and only such licence for a private navigation network operating alongside government systems.
六颗卫星升空，服务将于2027年推出。本月，Xona发射了六颗Pulsar卫星，这是该公司迄今规模最大的一次发射。其中四颗将从2027年初起在多个国家支持测试版服务。另外两颗完全由Xona在其位于加利福尼亚州伯灵格姆的工厂内部设计和制造。它们将用于测试完整星座的设计，曼宁表示，该星座的目标是每周生产数颗卫星。
Six satellites up, service in 2027 This month Xona launched six Pulsar satellites, its largest launch so far. Four will support beta service in several countries from early 2027. Xona designed and built the other two entirely in-house, at its factory in Burlingame, California. They will test the design for the full constellation, which Manning said is meant for production at several satellites a week.
“在短短一年多的时间里，该公司已从一项验证任务推进到部署一个全新全球导航网络的基础，”Future Ventures联合创始人史蒂夫·尤尔韦松表示。
“In just over a year, the company has advanced from a validation mission to deploying the foundation of an entirely new global navigation network,” said Steve Jurvetson, co-founder of Future Ventures.
尤尔韦松是SpaceX的长期董事会成员，他只投资过三家太空公司：SpaceX、Planet和Xona。据《福布斯》指出，这三家公司分别对应三大主要卫星市场：通信、地球成像和导航。
Jurvetson, a longtime SpaceX board member, has backed only three space companies: SpaceX, Planet and Xona. They map onto the three main satellite markets, Forbes noted: communications, imaging the Earth and navigation.
Xona并非唯一在低地球轨道扩大规模的公司。本月，亚马逊为其宽带网络制造了第1000颗Leo卫星。在欧洲，Open Cosmos于9月筹集了3亿欧元，以扩大卫星制造规模。而本周，SpaceX的季度业绩显示其AI业务已超过Starlink。
Xona is not alone in scaling up in low Earth orbit. Amazon built its 1,000th Leo satellite this month for its broadband network. In Europe, Open Cosmos raised €300 million in September to scale satellite manufacturing. And this week, SpaceX’s quarterly results showed its AI business overtaking Starlink.