ABL Space Systems
Funding History
| Series B extension · 12/2021 | $2.4B |
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Overview
ABL Space Systems was founded in 2017 by Dan Piemont and Harry O'Hanley and is headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company built its business around RS1, an orbital launch vehicle designed to carry up to 1,350 kg to low Earth orbit, paired with GS0, a ground launch system packaged into standard shipping containers so that launch infrastructure could be deployed to remote sites on short notice.
ABL raised roughly $420 million in venture funding through the end of 2021, including a $200 million Series B extension round closed in December 2021 that valued the company at $2.4 billion. RS1's first orbital launch attempt, on January 10, 2023, failed when all nine first-stage engines shut down simultaneously shortly after liftoff; the FAA closed its investigation into that mishap in November 2023. In March 2023 the company was awarded $60 million in matched U.S. Space Force and Air Force Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) funding to develop on-call, rapid-response launch capability, and a second RS1 vehicle was lost in a July 2024 preflight anomaly ahead of a planned second launch attempt.
By November 2024, after raising nearly $461 million in total, founder and president Dan Piemont announced that ABL would pivot away from commercial launch vehicles toward missile-defense applications, citing a maturing commercial launch market and a U.S. capability gap in missile defense. On February 19, 2025, the company completed that shift by rebranding from ABL Space Systems to Long Wall, repositioning around containerized missile-defense systems and repurposing RS1-derived vehicles as hypersonic flight-test targets.
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