The U.S. space industry appears mature, but the supply chain that provides all the parts and components for rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft appears considerably less mature. Gimbal Space wants to change that, starting with the components of the critical subsystems that allow spacecraft to orient themselves in space, but at a lower cost and much faster.
The startup was founded by Dhaval Shiyani, a mechanical engineer with a background in scaling complex hardware systems. He joined Tesla in 2017 and spent six months helping the company scale its Fremont factory’s Model 3 production from 50 to 5,000 vehicles per week. He then moved to Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, designing high-volume medical devices. The challenge there was to ensure that each component was manufactured and tested to be 100 percent reliable, and that was done across a million components.
“I learned a lot about mass production, what it takes to build a company quickly and what it takes to scale,” he said of his time at Tesla.
Shiyani entered the space ecosystem when he joined electric propulsion startup Apollo Fusion. CEO Mike Cassidy brought him in to help move a prototype thruster from the lab into production. That meant reducing parts counts and lowering costs, which meant bringing component design in-house. The startup was eventually acquired by Astra, and Shiyani joined a team early in the design of a 13,000-satellite constellation. He eventually moved to Earth imaging company Planet, where he worked on the next-generation imaging satellite, Pelican.
He says he has repeatedly encountered the same problems with parts ordering throughout his time in the space industry: high costs, very long lead times, and a general immaturity of the supply chain, with many components not yet commercialized. He says it is a problem of “focus, inertia, and approach” from existing suppliers.
“There are needs and demands that are not being met by existing suppliers,” he explained. “These components, these subsystems, are almost always secondary revenue streams. They can charge a very high premium for some of these components because they are most likely (very) profitable, high-margin product lines that they have no incentive to deliver quickly or cheaply.”
The subsystem that Gimbal initially targets is called the attitude determination and control system, or ADCS, which requires extreme precision and includes components such as star trackers, reaction wheels, and torque rods. Gimbal also plans to eventually expand into other components of ADCS, such as magnetometers, sun sensors, and velocity sensors.
There are several major ADCS component suppliers in North America, including Honeywell, Blue Canyon Technologies (owned by RTX), and Rocket Lab, which acquired Canada’s Sinclair Interplanetary. Some suppliers specialize in large components, while others specialize in very small components, making it a fairly fragmented market. (Shiyani’s comments were not directed at any specific supplier.)
Suppliers typically have no interest or incentive to lower their prices to compete with other companies, Shiyani said. “There’s not a lot of leeway there. Obviously, scale can give you a leg up, but it’s far from ‘if I get this much for X, I should lower my prices.’”
Lead times are also very slow. It takes years, not months, and it is much more likely for a startup that is concerned about monthly consumption and costs. On the other hand, Gimbal aims to deliver products in half the time and at 25-30% lower prices than traditional suppliers. One way the company is trying to bring about this huge reduction in its supply chain is by moving some of its manufacturing to India.
The company has already found a manufacturing partner in India that can quickly deliver reliable hardware. Gimbal is based in India to oversee these efforts. In the short term, Gimbal will contract manufacture both in India and the US, but the goal is to build its own manufacturing capabilities.
The company has raised $1.2 million led by Abu Dhabi-based AUM Ventures, with participation from Shakti VC, Z21 Ventures, and others. The money will be used to launch Gimbal’s components into orbit for the first time, whether for a customer spacecraft or a demo flight to demonstrate its capabilities, and to grow the team and scale manufacturing. The startup currently aims to have the components ready by the end of the year, with the first flight expected to take place within a few months.
