Gimbal Space outcompetes legacy suppliers with fast-paced component supply chain

The US space industry appears to be mature, but the supply chain that provides all the parts and components for rockets, satellites and other spacecraft is far less mature. Gimbal Space is aiming to change this, starting with components in the critical subsystem that enables spacecraft to orient themselves in space – but with cheaper and much faster delivery.

The startup was founded by mechanical engineer Dhaval Shiani, who has made a career of scaling complex hardware systems. He joined Tesla in 2017 and helped increase the company’s Fremont factory’s production of Model 3 vehicles from 50 to 5,000 per week in a six-month period. After that, he moved to Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, where he designed high-volume medical devices. There, the challenge was to ensure that every component was manufactured and tested 100% reliable — and to do so across a million components.

About his time at Tesla, he said, “I learned a lot about high-volume manufacturing, what it takes to build a company fast, and what it takes to scale.”

Schianni found his way into the space ecosystem when he joined electric propulsion startup Apollo Fusion. CEO Mike Cassidy brought him on to take a prototype thruster from the lab to production. That meant reducing the number of parts and lowering costs, even if it involved bringing the design of a component in-house. The startup was eventually acquired by Astra, and there Schianni was added to the team that was in the early stages of designing a 13,000-satellite constellation. He eventually moved to Earth imaging company Planet, where he worked on their next-generation imaging satellite, Pelican.

Throughout his tenure in the space industry, he said he repeatedly encountered the same problems when it came to ordering parts: high costs, too long lead times and an overall immaturity in the supply chain, where many components had not yet been commoditized. He said it’s an issue of “focus, inertia and approach” at legacy suppliers.

“There’s a need and a demand that’s not being met by the existing providers,” he explained. “These components, these subsystems, are almost always secondary revenue streams. They can charge a pretty high premium on some of these components because they can most likely avoid that. It’s [an] There’s a very attractive, high-margin product line that they have no incentive to deliver quickly or cheaply.”

The subsystem that Gimbal is targeting first is called the Attitude Determination and Control System, or ADCS, a device that demands extreme precision and includes components such as star trackers, reaction wheels and torque rods. Gimbal eventually plans to expand to other components of the ADCS, such as magnetometers, sun sensors and rate sensors.

There are a few major ADCS component suppliers in North America, including Honeywell, Blue Canyon Technologies (which is owned by RTX) and Rocket Lab, which acquired Canada-based Sinclair Interplanetary. Some suppliers specialize in large components, while others are much smaller, making this a fairly fragmented market. (Schiani’s comments were not about any specific supplier.)

Shiani said that in general, suppliers are not interested in or incentivized to lower prices to compete with other companies: “There’s not a lot of discounting. Obviously, you might get some favorable treatment as you go up, but it’s not like, ‘If I’m getting this much from X, you should lower your prices.'”

Lead times are also very slow: months or years, which is more than likely for startups that are concerned about monthly burn and costs. In contrast, Gimbal aims to deliver goods in half the time, with prices 25-30% lower than legacy suppliers. One way to bring about such a massive reduction in the supply chain is for the company to move some manufacturing to India.

The company has already identified a manufacturing partner in India that can deliver reliable hardware quickly; Gimbal has a director in India who helps oversee that effort. In the short term, Gimbal will do contract manufacturing in both India and the US, though it aims to build out its own manufacturing capabilities.

The company has raised $1.2 million in funding led by Abu Dhabi-based AUM Ventures, with participation from Shakti VC, Z21 Ventures, and others. The money will be spent on getting the gimbal’s components to orbit for the first time — whether it’s on a customer spacecraft or on a demo flight to demonstrate functionality — expanding the team, and building out manufacturing. The startup is currently aiming to have the components ready by the end of the year, followed by the first flight within a few months.