Apex

Apex is a Los Angeles-based aerospace company that designs and manufactures productized spacecraft platforms, or satellite buses, intended to be built repeatably at industrial scale rather than as one-off custom vehicles. Founded in 2022 by CEO Ian Cinnamon and CTO Max Benassi, the company calls itself 'The Spacecraft Platform Company' and positions its work around closing what it describes as a 'platform gap' between growing launch capacity and the industry's ability to manufacture configurable spacecraft at scale.

The company's product line includes the Aries bus, its foundational LEO/MEO/GEO-capable platform; the larger Nova bus, an ESPA-Grande class platform aimed at bigger payloads; and the Comet line, offered in Mini and XL configurations. Apex builds these platforms at its Factory One facility in Los Angeles, which the company has said it is scaling toward production of more than 200 platforms a year, and has expanded to more than 100,000 square feet. Apex has also said it intentionally flies its own testbed vehicles early in each product line so that issues surface on Apex-owned missions before customers rely on the same platform.

Apex's Aries bus first reached orbit aboard SpaceX's Transporter-10 rideshare mission, which the company said made it the fastest founding-to-launch spacecraft in its size class, delivered in under 12 months from order. Apex has since been selected for the Space Development Agency's HALO program for proliferated low Earth orbit satellites, and counts commercial customers such as Loft Orbital and Sophia Space among the operators buying its spacecraft platforms, alongside partners including Northrop Grumman on a U.S. Space Force-related demonstration.