Bridgit Mendler’s Northwood Space is now valued at $2 billion

A decade ago, Bridgit Mendler was best known as the star of the Disney Channel show “Good Luck Charlie.” This week, her company closed a funding round that values it at $2 billion, according to TechCrunch and Axios.

Northwood Space, which Mendler co-founded and runs as chief executive, said on Monday that it raised $375 million in a Series C round. The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and DFJ Growth. Alpine Space Ventures, Washington Harbour Partners, Stepstone Activate and In-Q-Tel, the CIA-backed investment firm, also took part. The company also lined up a separate credit facility with HSBC Innovation Banking.

Today, Northwood is announcing a $375M Series C.

In February of 2024, less than three years ago, we announced Northwood as a small six-person team.
We’ve grown a lot, but the goal stays the same - solve connectivity between Earth and space to take missions further faster.

The… pic.twitter.com/vfPoEDqoyp

- Northwood (@NorthwoodSpace) November 2, 2026

What Northwood builds

Satellites are only useful if you can talk to them. That happens through ground stations, the big antennas on the ground that send commands up and pull data down. There are a lot more satellites in orbit than there used to be, and the ground side has not kept up.

Northwood, based in Torrance, California, builds those ground stations. Its pitch is that it can make them faster and cheaper than the old way, and then run them as a network that satellite companies can rent time on.

A fast rise

The jump in value has been quick. Northwood raised a $100 million Series B in January, according to TechCrunch. About nine months later, it has raised almost four times that.

The company says it has more than 140 employees and plans to add 400 jobs in Torrance and Washington, DC over three years.

The investor list says something too. In-Q-Tel backs technology that is useful to US intelligence agencies, which suggests the government side of the business matters to Northwood’s plans.

From actor to founder

Mendler’s path is not a normal one for a space company CEO. After acting and a pop music career in her teens and early twenties, she went back to school. She studied at MIT and at Harvard Law School, and worked on space policy before starting Northwood with her co-founders.

That background gets a lot of attention online. But the funding round is the part that counts. Top venture firms put $375 million into the company because they think ground stations are a real bottleneck for the space industry, and that Northwood can fix it.

What we don’t know

Northwood has not shared revenue figures, and it has not said how much of the company Mendler owns. A $2 billion valuation is a private price set by investors. It does not mean she is a billionaire, and we are not putting a number on her stake.

Editorial only, not financial advice.

Top photo: friedoxygen via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.