Venus Aerospace Secures $91M Series B to Scale 3D-Printed Rocket Engines

The additive manufacturing industry has received further validation from the aerospace sector. Houston, Texas-based hypersonic startup Venus Aerospace has officially closed a $91 million Series B financing round. Led by the venture capital firm Mercury Fund, the round saw participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital, and Green Sands Equity, among other strategic and institutional investors. Venus Aerospace, which is also backed by existing investors such as Airbus Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, Prime Movers Lab, and America’s Frontier Fund, plans to use the capital to scale its development and production. Specifically, the funds will transition its flight-proven, high-thrust Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) propulsion system from a successful demonstration toward deployment for near-term defense and space applications.

For the 3D printing community, the real interest is how Venus Aerospace is leveraging additive manufacturing to solve complex propulsion challenges. The company builds its RDRE using components made via laser powder bed fusion. This 3D printing process enables the integration of complex internal structures, including custom coolant channels and injector orifices, that are impossible to fabricate using traditional machining. At the technical core of the RDRE is a circular combustion chamber that generates thrust through continuous, spinning supersonic detonation waves. To withstand the extreme heat and pressure-gain combustion of detonative waves, the propulsion system leverages specialized NASA alloys, incorporating GRCop-42 for high thermal conductivity and GRX-810 for extreme temperature resilience.

This mechanism yields a 15 percent increase in efficiency over conventional rocket engines, making it the most efficient rocket engine architecture ever flown. This efficiency gain translates into extended range and enhanced payload flexibility.