Raven Space Systems
Modernizing Aerospace & Defense manufacturing with revolutionary composite 3D printing.
Website: https://www.ravenspacesystems.com/
Cover Block
PUBLIC
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Raven Space Systems |
| Tagline | Modernizing Aerospace & Defense manufacturing with composite 3D printing |
| Headquarters | Broomfield, Colorado, United States |
| Founded | 2020 |
| Stage | Seed (Pre-Seed round closed November 2024) |
| Business Model | B2B / B2G |
| Industry | Defense and Aerospace manufacturing |
| Technology Type | Hardware (composite additive manufacturing) |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2): Blake Herren, Ryan Cowdrey |
| Funding Label | Pre-Seed |
| Total Disclosed | ~$2,000,000 equity, plus ~$4.5M in non-dilutive contracts (estimated, aggregated from cited awards) |
Links
PUBLIC
- Website: https://www.ravenspacesystems.com/
- Careers portal: https://portal.ravenspacesystems.com/mission
Executive Summary
PUBLIC
Raven Space Systems is a Broomfield, Colorado hardware startup commercializing a patent-pending Microwave Assisted Deposition (MAD) 3D printing process for aerospace-grade thermoset and ceramic composites, a niche where domestic supply is thin and Department of Defense demand is rising. The company was founded in 2020 by Blake Herren (CEO) and Ryan Cowdrey (CTO), both mechanical engineers out of the University of Oklahoma where Herren completed a Ph.D. and Cowdrey a master's degree [Forbes]. Its differentiation rests on a deposition process the company says minimizes labor, tooling, and waste while producing silicon and silicon carbide parts at scale, including components for thermal protection systems and space return capsules [EDC; Forbes]. Capitalization to date is modest on the equity side: a $2.0M pre-seed closed on November 20, 2024, with participation from Backswing Ventures, 46 Venture Capital, Mana Ventures, What If Ventures, and Cape Fear Ventures [Crunchbase]. The non-dilutive stack is the more interesting line item, with roughly $4.5M in contracts from the Air Force, NASA and others since 2020, anchored by a $1.8M AFWERX STTR Phase II award in November 2024 [BizWest; Startland News]. Colorado's Economic Development Commission has approved up to $5.85M in performance-based Job Growth Incentive Tax Credits tied to a stated plan to bring 392 jobs to Broomfield over eight years [Area Development]. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the items to watch are the transition from STTR Phase II deliverables into a priced production contract, the stand-up of the cubic-meter industrial-scale printer the company has signaled it will use to begin selling parts [SpaceNews], and whether headcount, currently reported at four as of August 2025 [Fabbaloo], scales toward the hiring plan implied by the open roles and the state incentive package.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Crunchbase, SpaceNews, BizWest, and Area Development.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Seed (Pre-Seed closed Nov 2024) |
| Business Model | B2B / B2G hardware and parts supply |
| Industry / Vertical | Aerospace and Defense manufacturing |
| Technology Type | Composite additive manufacturing (MAD process) |
| Geography | Broomfield, Colorado, USA |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale, grant-anchored |
| Founding Team | Two technical co-founders, both ME backgrounds |
| Funding | ~$2.0M equity disclosed, ~$4.5M non-dilutive |
Company Overview
PUBLIC
Raven Space Systems was founded in 2020 by two mechanical engineers, Blake Herren and Ryan Cowdrey, who met at the University of Oklahoma and built the company around a deposition technique they had been developing in academic settings [Forbes]. The company describes itself as "a venture-backed startup with active government programs and strong commercial momentum, helping revitalize the industrial base by developing breakthroughs in automated manufacturing" [company website]. Its stated mission is "to transform composite manufacturing to alleviate critical supply chain bottlenecks and accelerate innovation," language that appears across multiple of its open job postings [company website].
The company is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, having relocated into the Denver-Boulder corridor where the aerospace cluster, including primes and Tier 1 suppliers, is concentrated. That move was meaningful enough to draw a state-level incentive: the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved up to $5,852,666 in performance-based Job Growth Incentive Tax Credits over eight years tied to a stated plan to bring 392 jobs to Broomfield [Area Development; BizWest]. Headcount as of August 2025 is reported at four [Fabbaloo], so the gap between current staffing and the incentive-tied hiring plan is the live operating question.
Key milestones, in order: company formation in 2020; accumulation of SBIR/STTR contracts beginning in the early years of operation [Factories in Space]; research agreements with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory [SpaceNews]; a $1.8M AFWERX STTR Phase II award in November 2024 [Startland News]; and a $2.0M pre-seed equity round closing the same month, on November 20, 2024 [Crunchbase].
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Crunchbase, SpaceNews, Area Development, and BizWest.
Product and Technology
MIXED
The core product is a class of composite parts (silicon, silicon carbide, ceramic, and thermoset composites) produced through a process the company calls Microwave Assisted Deposition, or MAD [PUBLIC]. According to the company and a third-party manufacturing database, MAD is patent-pending and is positioned to enable large-scale 3D printing of aerospace-grade composites while minimizing labor, tooling, and waste [Explorium; EDC]. The end-use applications described publicly are thermal protection systems, lightweight structures, and space return capsules, which are categories where the conventional manufacturing path is layup-intensive, low-yield, and dependent on a small number of qualified suppliers [Pitch; City Entrepreneur Podcast].
On the production roadmap, SpaceNews reports the company plans to begin selling parts produced in an industrial-scale printer with a cubic-meter build volume [SpaceNews] [PUBLIC]. That build envelope is the operationally significant detail: it is large enough to address full-scale heat shield panels and structural sub-assemblies rather than coupons. The company's website also references a "RavenHome" portal and an internal jobs system, suggesting a software layer wrapping the manufacturing operation, though the specifics of that stack are not publicly described [company portal] [MIXED, inferred from job postings]. The presence of a Senior Software Engineer role indicates the team is investing in in-house tooling rather than relying solely on off-the-shelf MES software (inferred from job postings) [PUBLIC].
What is not publicly available is the qualification status of the parts: whether any specific component has been accepted onto a flight program, the unit economics of MAD-produced parts versus conventional layup, or the throughput of the planned cubic-meter system. Investors evaluating the technology should treat the MAD process as scientifically credible (the founders have a doctoral and master's research lineage tied to it [Forbes], and AFWERX has put $1.8M of Phase II money behind it [Startland News]) but commercially pre-revenue in the public record.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Process described by Explorium, EDC and SpaceNews; production economics not publicly disclosed.
Market Research and Opportunity
PUBLIC
The market that matters here is the domestic supply of high-temperature composite and ceramic structures for defense and space, a category where the U.S. industrial base has been publicly described by the Department of Defense as fragile and capacity-constrained.
No named third-party report sizing the addressable market for composite 3D printing in aerospace and defense appears in the verified source set, so a precise TAM/SAM/SOM is not asserted here. What the cited evidence does establish is the demand-side direction. The Air Force, through AFWERX, has put non-dilutive capital into the company at the Phase II level [Startland News], NASA and AFRL hold research agreements with the company [SpaceNews], and the National Science Foundation has contributed to the $1.5M+ non-dilutive funding stack [NSIN]. Three different federal customers writing checks into the same small company is a useful proxy for category pull.
| Cited sizing or demand signal | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Raven non-dilutive contracts since 2020 | ~$4.5M | [BizWest] |
| AFWERX STTR Phase II award (Nov 2024) | $1.8M | [Startland News] |
| Cumulative SBIR/STTR awards to date | $1M+ | [Factories in Space] |
| Colorado JGITC ceiling tied to 392 planned jobs | $5.85M over 8 yrs | [Area Development] |
The analyst takeaway is straightforward: in the absence of a clean published TAM, the most useful signal is the velocity of customer-funded development. Roughly $4.5M of taxpayer money flowing into a four-person company since 2020 [BizWest; Fabbaloo] indicates that the relevant program offices believe the technical risk is worth retiring. That is a different and arguably stronger signal than a top-down TAM number.
The demand drivers worth flagging: the U.S. hypersonics program is composite- and ceramic-intensive on the thermal protection side; reusable launch and reentry vehicles need shieldable, repeatable, lower-cost heat structures; and on-orbit return capsules (a use case Raven has discussed publicly [City Entrepreneur Podcast]) are a growing commercial category. Adjacent and substitute markets include traditional layup houses, ceramic matrix composite specialists at the prime-supplier tier, and metal additive manufacturing (which addresses different parts of the bill of materials but competes for capital expenditure inside primes' factories). Regulatory and macro forces cut in the company's favor: ITAR-controlled domestic supply, CHIPS-and-defense industrial base policy, and DoD's stated preference for non-traditional vendors all flow toward small, U.S.-based, IP-owning manufacturers.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Demand signals confirmed by SpaceNews, Startland News, and BizWest; no named third-party TAM source available.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED
Raven competes less with the named primes listed in databases and more with a layer of specialist composite and additive-manufacturing suppliers that sit beneath them.
| Company | Positioning | Stage / Funding | Notable Differentiator | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raven Space Systems | Composite and ceramic 3D printing for aerospace TPS and structures | Pre-Seed, ~$2M equity, ~$4.5M non-dilutive | Patent-pending MAD process; cubic-meter build volume planned | [Crunchbase]; [SpaceNews] |
| RTX (Raytheon Technologies) | Prime contractor, in-house composites and CMC capability | Public, large-cap | Vertically integrated into missile and propulsion programs | [CB Insights] |
| Airbus | Prime, large-scale composite airframe manufacturer | Public, large-cap | Decades of qualified composite production at airframe scale | [CB Insights] |
| Lockheed Martin | Prime, hypersonics and TPS programs | Public, large-cap | Owns the customer relationship Raven would supply into | [CB Insights] |
The primes named in Raven's database listings (RTX, Airbus, Lockheed Martin) are not really head-to-head competitors in the conventional sense; they are the most plausible end-customers and, in some cases, partners. The actual competitive set sits at the supplier tier and includes ceramic matrix composite specialists inside the primes' supply chains, metal additive manufacturers expanding into ceramic feedstocks, and a handful of well-funded composite 3D printing startups working on adjacent geometries. The structured facts do not name those specific challengers, so this report does not assert positions for them.
Where Raven has a defensible edge today: the IP position around MAD is the proprietary asset, and the Air Force, NASA and AFRL relationships are switching-cost moats in a market where qualification cycles measure in years rather than quarters [SpaceNews; Startland News]. That edge is durable as long as the patent prosecutes cleanly and the Phase II deliverables convert into Phase III sole-source production opportunities, which is the standard SBIR ladder. It is perishable if a larger composite-printing player files overlapping IP or if a prime in-houses an equivalent process.
Where Raven is most exposed: it does not own the customer relationship. RTX, Lockheed and Northrop sit between Raven and the program of record, and any of them could elect to develop or acquire equivalent capability. Raven also does not yet have public evidence of a qualified flight part on a named program, which is the gating credential for tier-one supplier status. A four-person headcount as of August 2025 [Fabbaloo] is small relative to the qualification, ITAR compliance, and AS9100 documentation burden that production contracts impose.
The most plausible 18-month scenarios: winner if Raven converts its AFWERX Phase II into a Phase III production order with a named prime as the integrator, which would validate both the process and the customer pull. Loser if the cubic-meter system slips materially or if a competing startup raises a Series A large enough to out-hire Raven into the same program offices before Raven closes its own priced Series A.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Subject data confirmed by Crunchbase and SpaceNews; competitor set inferred from CB Insights listings rather than direct head-to-head reporting.
Opportunity
PUBLIC
The size of the prize, if Raven executes, is becoming a default domestic supplier of high-temperature composite and ceramic structures for the next generation of U.S. defense and space programs.
The headline opportunity. The single largest outcome Raven could plausibly become is the qualified, IP-owning U.S. source for printed thermal protection and ceramic composite structures across hypersonics, reentry, and reusable launch programs. The cited evidence makes that outcome reachable rather than aspirational because three federal customers (Air Force via AFWERX, NASA, AFRL) are already paying the company to retire technical risk on exactly that capability [Startland News; SpaceNews; NSIN], and the state of Colorado has underwritten a 392-job hiring plan with up to $5.85M of performance-based credits [Area Development]. Both signals are unusual for a four-person seed-stage company and indicate that the customer and policy environment have already pre-positioned for Raven to scale into a tier-one supplier role if the process qualifies.
Growth scenarios.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase III sole-source TPS supplier | Raven converts AFWERX Phase II into a Phase III production contract on a named hypersonics or reentry program | A prime integrator (e.g. one of the named majors) selects Raven for a qualified TPS panel | $1.8M Phase II already in flight as of Nov 2024 [Startland News] |
| Commercial reentry capsule supplier | Raven becomes the printed-heatshield supplier for one or more commercial LEO return providers | Cubic-meter industrial printer comes online and ships first priced parts [SpaceNews] | Company has publicly discussed return-capsule applications [City Entrepreneur Podcast] |
| Colorado anchor manufacturer | Raven scales toward the 392-job plan, becoming a regional aerospace manufacturing employer | Drawing down state JGITC credits against actual hiring milestones [Area Development] | State incentive structure already approved |
What compounding looks like. The flywheel in this category is qualification, not customer acquisition. Each part Raven gets onto a flight program creates two compounding effects: a multi-year recurring production stream (parts on a missile or capsule program reorder predictably) and a credentialing asset that shortens the qualification cycle for the next program. Layered on top is the IP moat: a prosecuted MAD patent that covers a specific deposition geometry would let Raven license or block competing approaches in adjacent ceramic categories. There is early evidence the flywheel is starting to spin, in the form of multiple federal agencies funding the same company [SpaceNews; Startland News; NSIN] and a state government underwriting hiring against expected demand [Area Development].
The size of the win. No named third-party TAM appears in the verified source set, so this report avoids a dollar figure on the category. As a directional comparable, the public market has historically rewarded specialty aerospace materials and additive-manufacturing companies that achieve sole-source status on defense programs at multiples well above generic industrials, and tier-one composite suppliers inside the primes' supply chains generate hundreds of millions of dollars of annual revenue per qualified part family. If Raven converts even one Phase III into a multi-year production contract, the company moves from a grant-funded R&D shop into a priced supplier with a recurring revenue base (scenario, not a forecast). The asymmetry that makes this interesting at the seed stage is that the equity capitalization, roughly $2M [Crunchbase], is small relative to both the non-dilutive stack already secured and the size of the program-of-record outcomes the company is positioned against.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Scenarios anchored in cited federal awards and state incentives; no named TAM source confirms category sizing.
Sources
PUBLIC
[Crunchbase] Raven Space Systems funding profile | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/raven-space-systems
[SpaceNews] Raven Space Systems coverage of NASA and AFRL agreements and industrial-scale printer plans | https://spacenews.com/
[Startland News] Raven Space Systems awarded $1.8M AFWERX STTR Phase II (November 2024) | https://www.startlandnews.com/
[BizWest] Raven Space Systems contracts and Broomfield jobs plan | https://bizwest.com/
[Area Development] Colorado Economic Development Commission approval of Job Growth Incentive Tax Credit | https://www.areadevelopment.com/
[Forbes] Profile of Blake Herren and Ryan Cowdrey, University of Oklahoma backgrounds | https://www.forbes.com/
[Factories in Space] Raven Space Systems profile and SBIR/STTR funding tally | https://www.factoriesinspace.com/raven-space-systems
[CB Insights] Raven Space Systems company profile and people | https://www.cbinsights.com/company/raven-space-systems
[CB Insights] Raven Space Systems executive team | https://www.cbinsights.com/company/raven-space-systems/people
[Explorium] Raven Space Systems manufacturing overview and MAD process description | https://www.explorium.ai/manufacturing/companies/raven-space-systems
[EDC] Raven Space Systems MAD process description | https://edc.org/
[NSIN] Raven Space Systems non-dilutive funding from NASA, AFWERX, NSF | https://www.nsin.mil/
[Pitch] Raven Space Systems company page | https://pitch.vc/companies/raven-space-systems
[Austin Startups] Raven Space Systems listing | https://www.austinstartups.com/companies/raven-space-systems
[City Entrepreneur Podcast] Interview discussing return capsule applications and fundraising | https://cityentrepreneur.com/
[Activate] Raven Space Systems fellow profile | https://activate.org/raven-space-systems
[Fabbaloo] Reporting on Raven Space Systems headcount as of August 2025 | https://www.fabbaloo.com/
[company website] Raven Space Systems homepage and careers portal | https://www.ravenspacesystems.com/
Articles about Raven Space Systems
- Raven Space Systems Is Betting a Cubic Meter of Composite Printing on the Pentagon's Heat Shield Problem — The Broomfield startup wants to print silicon carbide parts for return capsules, and Air Force money is paying for the proof.