Pioneering a better space launch system: why we invested in MoonshotGil Dibner, angular ventures

Original blog 

Origin story. In August 2023, an incredible entrepreneur named Shahar Bahiri emailed me a slide deck for a company he was building called Moonshot. The idea sounded completely crazy at the time: an electromagnetic space launch system designed to deliver payloads to orbit at radically reduced cost—effectively, a maglev train to space. Listed as co-founder was Hilla Haddad Chelmnik. Although she was only part-time at Moonshot then, her presence on the team spoke volumes about Shahar’s entrepreneurial capabilities and the fundamental appeal of his vision. Hilla is a powerhouse aerospace engineer who previously held senior civilian government roles in Israel, where she oversaw major components of the development and deployment of the Iron Dome and Arrow missile systems.

My first response was to send the deck to Fred Simon, a Venture Partner at Angular Ventures and the former Chief Architect of JFrog, a $6B publicly traded company he founded in 2008. Having worked closely with Fred for several years, I knew he was going deep—incredibly deep—on spacetech. A few days and several questions later, Fred and I met Shahar. A few months later, we invested in Moonshot, leading the company’s $2.5M pre-seed round alongside Fred himself.

Fred, for his part, had scrutinized the math and physics. He reviewed the energy density requirements and material science constraints. He examined the feasibility of releasing massive amounts of energy with the precise timing required to propel a vehicle through a coilgun at hypersonic speeds. Based on the fundamental physics, he became convinced that if this worked, the impact on space launch economics would be dramatic. Most crucially, Fred—like David and me at Angular—became convinced that the team Shahar and Hilla were assembling could actually pull this off. Even more significantly, Fred decided to join the company full-time. Having already built a $6B devtools SaaS company, Fred felt his next calling was to build something even bigger.

The risk-reward trade-off in deep tech. 

Angular does a lot of deep tech investing—an area we often call “weird tech.” The more radical a technology becomes, the larger the potential outcome must be to justify the engineering risk and basic science hurdles. In Moonshot’s case, that equation balances perfectly. The engineering risks here are massive; no one has ever launched anything into orbit using this method. But if Moonshot succeeds, the upside is enormous. They are poised to fundamentally rewrite the economics of space launch. For a reward of that scale, we are willing to accept uncommonly high risk.

Rewriting the rocket equation. 

The Rocket Equation is a fundamental limitation in space travel governing the efficiency of propulsion systems that rely on chemical fuel. It dictates that for a conventional rocket to reach orbital velocity, the vast majority of its mass must be chemical propellant. Essentially, you need fuel to lift the payload, but you also need fuel to lift the fuel itself. Consequently, modern chemical rockets have a notoriously low payload capacity, typically limiting the actual cargo to only about 4% of the vehicle's total mass. This results in inefficient and costly logistics; for instance, launching a kilogram of water costs the same as launching a kilogram of high-tech equipment.

Moonshot sidesteps the traditional rocket equation by employing a kinetic launch system based on electromagnetic acceleration. (A small rocket is used only for the final stage.) The technology uses a contactless electromagnetic accelerator as the first stage, propelling payloads up to 8 kilometers per second using electricity to provide the majority of the energy required for orbit. By eliminating the heavy fuel tanks traditionally needed for liftoff, Moonshot drastically reduces the spacecraft's mass. This revolutionary approach boosts the payload fraction from the standard 4% to over 45%—potentially targeting 60%—effectively achieving a theoretical 10X reduction in spacecraft mass and a 10X increase in payload capacity. Eliminating chemical fuel as the primary energy source enables Moonshot to overcome the limitations of the classical rocket equation and offer a highly affordable supply chain delivery system. Needless to say, this is a complete game-changer for the space economy.

A unique opportunity. 

Moonshot recently announced their $12M seed funding round. We were delighted to participate, and we are thrilled to have backed the company from the pre-seed stage. We are grateful to Shahar for his ongoing leadership and courage in moving this process forward. We are thrilled to back Fred again, this time in his new incarnation as a spacetech pioneer. And we are beyond excited that Hilla has joined the company full-time as CEO.

Together, these three founders have assembled a truly extraordinary team. They have recently been joined by Caryn Schenewerk (formerly of SpaceX and Relativity Space) as U.S. GM, and Alon Ushpiz (former Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs) as Head of International Strategy. The engineering team is of equally high calibre. Moonshot has a real opportunity to revolutionize space launch forever.

The path to commercialization. 

When we first invested, the company believed they might generate interim revenue by finding near-term applications for a smaller version of their acceleration system. We viewed this as an interesting potential upside that was unlikely to materialize. The company is now well on its way to proving us wrong, providing a crucial national-scale hypersonic test capability. If things go to plan, a working initial version of the Moonshot accelerator will be generating revenue by 2027.

A distinctly Israeli opportunity. 

There is something distinctly Israeli about Moonshot worth noting. Israel has always faced disproportionate challenges unprecedented in scale and complexity. When Israel first proposed building an anti-missile system in 2007, the idea was widely considered impossible. The Americans reluctantly agreed to fund part of the project but did not expect it to work. Yet, over the past two years of conflict, Israel fielded the world's most advanced multi-layered defense system, intercepting thousands of projectiles—from short-range rockets to ballistic missiles in space—with a success rate of over 90%, saving countless civilian lives. Today, governments around the world are scrambling to catch up, and many, such as Germany, are buying these systems directly from Israeli producers. There is an optimistic outcome from Israel's reality of constant asymmetric threat: Israeli entrepreneurs know how to deliver unprecedented systems that simply must work. There is no alternative. This has trained a generation of entrepreneurs not just to believe in the impossible, but to deliver it ahead of schedule and under budget. Moonshot is a direct continuation of that legacy. We couldn’t be more excited for what's next!

Hard tech. Hard markets. We see Moonshot as a great example of what radically contrarian venture capital must be. If you are building something crazy, weird, or impossible - please let us know!