York Space Systems CEO Dirk Wallinger at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. Photo: York Space Systems

York Space Systems raised $629 million in an upsized initial public offering (IPO) on Thursday, which CEO Dirk Wallinger says will enable the company to manufacturer satellites “to meet large proliferation at scale, at an affordable price.” 

“We’re already proving that we can deliver to scale. Our country and our customers need that to be more scale,” Wallinger said Thursday in a media roundtable. He said the company can currently produce around 300 satellites per year. Moving forward, York plans to have inventoried spacecraft where payloads can be integrated and delivered on demand, and deliver hundreds to thousands of satellites per year. 

“These funds will help us inventory and really shrink that schedule. It’s also going to help us go to a little bit larger scale. We’re already delivering mass-production capability. We need to reduce those turn times so that we’re putting up hundreds and hopefully — let’s get to thousands a year,” he said. 

York Space Systems, based in Colorado, primarily supplies satellites for defense missions. It is a prime contractor for the Space Development Agency. In September, the SDA launched 21 satellites built by York for the Tranche 1, Transport Layer. 

Funds from the IPO will help York meet demand from programs like the Golden Dome, Wallinger said, noting the company is currently performing three different mission sets that are applicable to missile defense/missile warning capabilities of Golden Dome. 

“The challenge of Golden Dome is two-fold. The capabilities exist, but you have disparate systems. You have systems that were not intended to talk to one another. To do Gold Dome, they must talk to one another,” he said. “That has to change, and that’s why space is so important in doing that, because it’s natural that the space layer is the solution to integrate these disparate systems.” 

At the same time, Wallinger sees “significant opportunity” in commercial business, citing more mature financial backing for commercial constellations. 

“We’re seeing much more mature financial backing of a lot of the commercial constellations. Given that we are half the price, we have proven platforms in orbit — we see that putting a good strategic advantage on York winning more commercial business,” he said. 

According to its S-1 report, York Space Systems reported $253.5 million in revenue in 2024 — of which 95% was government revenue.

Last year, York Space Systems acquired ground systems as a service company Atlas Space Operations. Wallinger said more M&A is an option. 

Wallinger explained York’s strategy for M&A is for “suppliers that fit that mold [of] proven products, they’ve been working with us a while, and there’s an opportunity to ramp their production to the numbers that we’re going to need in ‘26 and beyond,” he said. “Atlas was an adjacent market, but they presented the opportunity to integrate their software into our software ecosystem. Sometimes that makes sense where there’s strategic direction for us to enable more capabilities by moving into adjacent markets. We’d be evaluating both of those opportunities.”

The company follows other large space IPOs in 2025 of Voyager Technologies and Firefly Aerospace. SpaceX is expected to go public this year.