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Tinkerer, pilot, aircraft/spacecraft engineer, rider, racer. Head of Structures/Mechanisms at @K2SpaceCo. Former: @SpaceX | @Maxar | @kittyhawkcorp
Los Angeles, CA
Joined September 2010
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I am incredibly excited and proud to be able share that @K2SpaceCo is coming out of stealth, and I can talk a little about what we have been working on!
The people are everything. I am happy to say that we have a phenomenal team at K2 Space, and we are growing and building!
Since its the perfect time to announce we're coming out of stealth, hello world!
We're K2 Space - We're building large satellites for a post-Starship future.
Learn a bit more about what we're working here:
nitter.cf/thesheetztweetz/status…
Drew Miller retweeted
Cat owners have a 30 percent lower risk of dying from a heart attack. A study published in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Neurology analysed data from 4,435 adults followed over 20 years in the Second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study and found that people who had owned a cat at any point had significantly lower cardiovascular mortality.
The study was led by Adnan Qureshi at the University of Minnesota. He found that cat owners had a 30 percent lower risk of death from myocardial infarction and a lower risk of death from all cardiovascular diseases combined, after adjusting for age, sex, race, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, BMI, and income. The effect held across every subgroup tested.
The mechanism is likely stress reduction. Cats, unlike dogs, do not need to be walked, which removes the exercise explanation. What they do provide is companionship, tactile contact, and a calming presence that lowers the baseline stress level in the home. Studies on pet interaction have shown that stroking a cat lowers cortisol and blood pressure within minutes, and those small daily reductions compound over years.
The study could not determine whether it was the cat that produced the benefit or whether people who choose to own cats have personality traits that independently protect against heart disease. But the size of the effect, 30 percent, and the length of follow-up, 20 years, made the finding hard to dismiss as coincidence.
A cat does not exercise with you, does not cook for you, and does not remind you to take your medication. It sits on your chest and purrs, and the 20-year data says that is enough. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2251…
Drew Miller retweeted
The sci-future I dreamed about as a kid is right here at our doorstep
Did you know you can request the raw photos from the Artemis II mission? There is a lot of information hidden in the RAWs that isn't visible in the jpgs.
Check the next post in this thread for the raw
It’s been an amazing 4 years.
In just four years, K2 Space has gone from a tiny WeWork office to the @Nasdaq tower in Times Square. Thank you, Nasdaq, for the recognition of our recent $500M Series D raise as we build large, high-power satellites for an abundant future in space.
K2 Space's @KaranKunjur on how the company is addressing the launch supply shortage, including the possibility that SpaceX shuts off commercial launch.
"The way we addressed it is, first, we pre-bought a number of launches."
"We've been able to raise capital at good terms year over year. We've used some of that capital just to de-risk the launch question from an execution perspective."
"The second is we built the satellite to be launch vehicle agnostic. That was a harder engineering challenge, but we built it so that the 20kW can be put on any 5M fairing class launch vehicle. The 100kW class can be put on Starship or New Glenn."
"We're incredibly excited about SpaceX. We're very close to the team. They've been great partners and great launch partners."
"But should they ever decide that we're going to shut off commercial launch and we're only going to launch our own hardware? We're prepared. We have taken the steps necessary to make sure that we have option value."
"Personally, I don't think that will be the case. But as the founder of a company, I need to think about all the scenarios and plan for the downside scenario."
Let’s go do the things that we said we would do, @neelkunjur. Exciting times ahead! I am so proud of what we all have built.
Incredibly excited to welcome @kleinerperkins, @ICONIQCapital, and many more new investors to the @K2SpaceCo team.
With this new capital, we plan to accelerate every aspect of our engineering vision. With Gravitas our engineering team showed we could design, build, launch, and operate one of the highest power satellite buses ever launched. Now we’re focused on expansion and scale.
With a proven high power satellite bus, our engineers and technicians are now taking on some of the hardest design and manufacturing challenges in the space industry. We intend to use all that power to do things no one else can.
Time to accelerate.
k2space.com/careers
You all did a phenomenal job showing the human fabric that makes up @K2SpaceCo. It was fun speaking with you!
It was a privilege to profile the people making K2 happen. So often we only see the output of amazing work like this, but it makes it even more special when you see the people behind it.
Founders and brothers Karan and Neel, who as kids fought over the room with the "Earthrise" photo on the wall.
The welder from Mississippi who calls the team "family."
The space lifer who joined K2 (even when people told him he shouldn't join a startup) because he knew how novel the company's thesis was.
The engineers who spent weeks grinding through a single problem.
Learn about them all here: youtube.com/watch?v=7_cS3RPY…
Drew Miller retweeted
Brothers @KaranKunjur and @neelkunjur set out to solve one of the space industry’s hardest engineering problems.
The pair bet that the future of space required bigger, more powerful satellites.
Today, we’re excited to continue backing @K2SpaceCo in its $500M Series D.
Their decision to build larger, more capable satellites meant that the team had to redesign most of the satellite in-house.
Most recently, the team successfully completed their 2026 Gravitas mission, marking 120 days in orbit for their first giant satellite mission.
We’re proud to continue supporting Karan, Neel, and the K2 Space team on their mission.
CC: @ravi_lsvp, Sebastian Duesterhoeft
Drew Miller retweeted
Lucky to be a small part of this epic team’s journey since the beginning. Congrats @neelkunjur @KaranKunjur and the entire @K2SpaceCo team. 🚀
Our biggest round yet: @K2SpaceCo has raised a $500M Series D at a $6.8B post-money valuation. The round was led by @kleinerperkins and @ICONIQCapital, with participation from @CapitalG, @lightspeedvp, @AltimeterCap, @sparkcapital, Sands Capital, @ARKInvest, @TRowePrice, and other existing investors.
"Scaling” is probably the word I’ve used most often the past few months in conversations with our investors, customers, and employees when talking about what’s next for K2 Space in 2027 and beyond:
--We’re going to continue to scale up mass production, to deliver against the $1B + in contracts we’ve won to-date.
--We’re going to scale up the satellite itself, from the 20kW Mega to the 100kW class Giga. Its no longer just 100kW, but we’ll save that update for another day.
The capital from the Series D will turbocharge this scaling.
Thanks to everyone who has been on this journey with us for the last four years – let's keep building bigger.
Drew Miller retweeted
Partnering with @KaranKunjur and @neelkunjur since leading @K2SpaceCo Series A has only strengthened our conviction. Their clarity of vision, ambition, and ability to execute have stood out and set the tone from day 1.
We're excited to continue supporting the team as they scale production, push the frontier of what's possible, and help shape the future of space.
Our biggest round yet: @K2SpaceCo has raised a $500M Series D at a $6.8B post-money valuation. The round was led by @kleinerperkins and @ICONIQCapital, with participation from @CapitalG, @lightspeedvp, @AltimeterCap, @sparkcapital, Sands Capital, @ARKInvest, @TRowePrice, and other existing investors.
"Scaling” is probably the word I’ve used most often the past few months in conversations with our investors, customers, and employees when talking about what’s next for K2 Space in 2027 and beyond:
--We’re going to continue to scale up mass production, to deliver against the $1B + in contracts we’ve won to-date.
--We’re going to scale up the satellite itself, from the 20kW Mega to the 100kW class Giga. Its no longer just 100kW, but we’ll save that update for another day.
The capital from the Series D will turbocharge this scaling.
Thanks to everyone who has been on this journey with us for the last four years – let's keep building bigger.
Drew Miller retweeted
What does it take to build a large, high-power satellite at a time when everyone else says it’s impossible? The K2 Space and @KaranKunjur and @neelkunjur team did it with Gravitas – and it’s amazing to see that behind-the-scenes process through this fantastic documentary.
In 2022, when we said we wanted to build giant satellites, people told us “No one is ever going to need satellites that large” and “Building satellites that large would be really difficult.”
When we said that we wanted to call our company K2, for a Type 2 Kardashev civilization, people asked us “What is a Kardashev?”
Fast forward four years and the Kardashev scale is now a mainstream concept, the entire market is moving bigger, and we just completed 100 days on orbit for our first giant satellite mission.
This is the story of Gravitas, from @firstround
I am so proud of this team and what we’ve done to date, and I’m so excited where we are going. It has been a pretty amazing 4 years, going from being the first engineer hired at @K2SpaceCo to our first satellite successfully operating in space, with more on the way.
"It was just an idea, and then one day, I got to touch it in real life. And then that thing that I touched in real life is going to space."
This is the story of how our co-founders (brothers @KaranKunjur and @neelkunjur) and our team of engineers, technicians, and mechanics took an idea that many people said was impossible -- building a large, high-power satellite at a fraction of the cost -- and put it into space in less than four years. Check out the Gravitas journey, from @firstround.
Pacific Northwest engineers take note- We are opening a K2 Space Seattle hub. Come build with us!
Opening up an office in Seattle - if you’re talented and want to work on some of the hardest engineering challenges in space check out our open roles below.
k2space.com/careers
Drew Miller retweeted
Some fun morning news to share:
1. A few weeks ago @K2SpaceCo became the world record holder for highest power hall thruster ever fired in space.
2. A couple weeks after that we doubled our power and put 2x margin between us and second best.
3. We are still only at 50% throttle.
We’re building sci-fi stuff over here and we’re just getting started.
hiring is the highest variance decision in an early startup. one bad hire at n=4 isn’t just a 25% drag, it resets what normal looks like for the whole team. this is esp true if that not great fit person is “senior”. they bring down the entire culture.
one great hire does the opposite, & recruits the next five. the asymmetry is huge.
take this lesson to heart from my failures lol.
This is good advice, folks.
If you are 22-25 years old (or any age!) here is evergreen advice that will never lead you wrong:
1) all deep meaning in life comes from being part of a team. As long as you bias your career and life choices toward the question “what is the best team (environment) for me?” you can’t go wrong. Humans evolved to work in a pack. And once you are with an “Apex pack” you can’t ever be in a non-Apex pack again. This is why so many elite athletes fall on hard times after retirement. Find your elite pack.
2) find something you enjoy doing that especially brings you intellectually curiosity or wonder. Apex packs are basically filled with those types. A sense of wonder unlocks all.
So don’t try to reverse engineer how these people “made it.” Just stay true to how humanity as a whole “made it.”
Drew Miller retweeted
Really excited to partner with @anduriltech on Golden Dome Space Based interceptors.
We'll be providing multiple host spacecraft vehicles across multiple lines of effort.
Some interesting points here:
1. This is one of the most relevant uses cases for the high payload mass of the K2 satellite
2. We’re the only ones that have launched anything close to the production system required
3. The platform necessary here is the exact same platform we’re using for our commercial constellations
4. The platform necessary is the exact same platform that is flying on-orbit today
Layer by layer - the team is stacking wins as we endeavor to have the K2 platform be in the center of some of the most critical constellations coming online over the next decade.
K2 Space is proud to announce that we are partnering with @anduriltech on the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense program. K2 will be providing our proven Mega-class satellites to host Space Based Interceptors.
Our satellites are bigger and more powerful than anything on orbit, and we’re thrilled to be selected for Golden Dome to demonstrate what these high power, high payload mass satellites can bring to the warfighter.
Read more from our partner Anduril here: anduril.com/news/anduril-tea…
