Charter Space raises $5M to scale its space-insurance brokerage

Why it matters

Charter is using aerospace engineering data to target the cost and complexity of insuring spacecraft. The round funds expansion, while the company's customer count alone does not show how many policies it has placed or whether its approach has lowered underwriting costs.

Charter Space announced a $5 million seed round on September 30th, bringing its reported total funding to $8 million. Crystal Venture Partners led the round, with QED, Blank Ventures, Hustle Fund and Gaingels participating, according to TechCrunch's report. The company said it would use the money to expand sales and add insurance offerings. Its announcement on X framed the business as support for a growing American space industry.

The bet belongs to co-founders Yuk Chi Chan and Yukun Yin, who started Charter with software for organizing aerospace engineering work. Chan had worked as a mission manager at a satellite bus startup, where engineering and program data sat in spreadsheets and had to be repackaged for different audiences. In a 2025 TechCrunch interview, he described it as "all the same data" about the same physical object. He and Yin saw that information as useful beyond engineering: it could help insurers assess spacecraft risk.

Chan brings space-law and operations experience to that thesis. He earned law degrees from Durham University and University College London and previously worked as a lawyer and in Singapore Army logistics, according to his profile. That mix shapes Charter's pitch: spacecraft insurance depends on technical details that a conventional insurance process can be slow and costly to evaluate. Charter is trying to make the data generated during design, manufacturing and testing usable in underwriting.

The company's Ubik software organizes mission planning, engineering requirements, test procedures, system diagrams and program records. Charter says the same operational information can support a path to insurance quotes. It also operates a nationally licensed insurance brokerage, launched in May 2026, rather than presenting itself as the insurer taking spacecraft risk onto its own balance sheet. The brokerage gives Charter a direct role in arranging coverage while its software supplies a technical workflow around the application.

Charter's coverage menu extends across the spacecraft lifecycle: assembly and integration, transportation, launch, orbital transfer, early in-orbit operations and coverage for assets already in space. It lists additional policies for hosted payloads, satellite constellations, business interruption, in-space servicing and space-based nuclear power, alongside commercial coverage such as cyber and technology errors and omissions. Lunar missions and other novel mission concepts are among the offerings the company says it wants to develop further.

Charter says it serves more than 50 companies across the U.S. space and defense industrial base. That is a company-reported customer figure; it does not specify how many customers have placed policies, how many spacecraft are insured or how much premium volume the brokerage has arranged. Those measures would show how much of the business is insurance placement versus software adoption.

The financing thesis is larger than selling policies. Chan has argued that insurance can give space companies a financial backstop after mission failure and help them access debt and credit alongside venture capital. That outcome depends on insurers accepting the data and risk assessments Charter provides, and on coverage being affordable enough for operators to buy. The seed gives Charter capital to grow its sales operation and broaden its coverage; the announcement does not establish whether its underwriting workflow has reduced the cost or time of securing insurance.

For investors, the round backs a company trying to turn aerospace operations data into financial infrastructure. Charter's near-term test is whether the brokerage can convert its technical workflow into repeat policy placements across a customer base that includes both emerging space companies and defense contractors. The proposed reach into lunar missions, spacecraft servicing and nuclear power brings more complex risks into view, but it also gives Charter a reason to build underwriting processes beyond the familiar satellite-launch policy.