Vast Inc. Raises $500M to Build Next Space Station

Long Beach-based Vast Inc. closed a $500 million funding round this month, its first time accepting external capital, as the five-year-old company pushes toward a goal that sounds almost routine when you lay it out plainly: replace the International Space Station.

The round was led by Balerion Space Ventures. It lands at a moment when Vast is accelerating on multiple fronts. The company moved into its largest facility to date in Long Beach in January, now housing more than 1,000 employees. It has expanded operations into Japan. And NASA has selected it to lead the sixth private astronaut mission to the ISS, with a target launch no earlier than next summer.

Its first commercial space station, Haven-1, is scheduled to launch in 2027.

Founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneur Jed McCaleb, Vast has positioned itself at the center of a structural shift in how governments around the world think about human spaceflight. The ISS, currently slated for retirement around 2030 or possibly 2032, is aging, expensive to maintain, and entangled in a partnership with Russia that has grown politically complicated. NASA and other space agencies, including JAXA in Japan and the European Space Agency, are actively looking for a commercially operated successor.

That is the opening Vast is building toward.

CEO Max Haot described the shift as a transition from government-owned, cost-plus contracting to a model where agencies become customers rather than owners. Under that framework, NASA would help fund and develop a commercial station, contribute engineering expertise and safety oversight, and then pay to use it for science, research, and crewed missions. The taxpayer cost, in theory, comes down. The commercial operator carries more of the risk and more of the upside.

“They help us develop it. They help us with engineering, with safety, with funding. But ultimately, at the end, they are a customer and user of it,” Haot said in an interview with the LA Business Journal.

Vast’s competitive pitch rests on specialization. The company describes its focus as crewed space stations and crewed space systems, starting with a station in low-Earth orbit and building toward larger platforms in different orbital configurations. That narrow focus, rather than trying to be a broad aerospace contractor, is the edge Haot points to when asked how Vast distinguishes itself in a market that includes better-funded and more established competitors.

Southern California has built a dense aerospace ecosystem in recent years, and Long Beach sits near its center. Companies like Vast are drawing on the same talent pipelines, supply chains, and physical infrastructure that have made the region a hub for commercial space development. The $500 million raise will help Vast compete for that talent and continue building out its Long Beach campus ahead of Haven-1’s launch window.

The NASA private astronaut mission represents a shorter-term milestone. Private astronaut missions to the ISS give companies like Vast operational experience with crewed spaceflight before their own stations are online. Getting selected to lead one signals that NASA has enough confidence in Vast’s capabilities to put crew on a mission under their management. That kind of institutional credibility matters when you are trying to sign the contracts that will define the post-ISS era.

The timeline is tight. If the ISS retires in 2030, Vast has roughly four years to demonstrate that Haven-1 works, attract additional government and commercial customers, and position itself as the viable commercial alternative agencies will need. The $500 million buys runway. The NASA selection buys credibility. Whether the hardware performs on schedule will determine whether any of it translates into the long-term contracts the company needs to sustain itself.

For now, the biggest milestones on the calendar are the private astronaut mission next summer and the Haven-1 launch in 2027. Both will be closely watched by NASA program managers and by competitors working on their own commercial station proposals. Long Beach will be where much of the work gets done.