Disney star’s space startup gets a $6.3M boost

Former Disney child star Bridgit Mendler co-founded space communication startup Northwood Space during the pandemic, which has raised $6.3 million in seed funding from major VCs like Peter Thiel and Andreessen Horowitz, among others.

Known for her roles in Good Luck Charlie and Wizards of Waverly Place, Mendler is now the CEO of Northwood. The startup focuses on mass-producing ground stations to facilitate data transfer between Earth and space. 

With the ever-increasing satellite count, Northwood wants to focus on bettering the ground architecture and leasing its servers to space companies, something akin to Amazon Web Services or Microsoft’s Azure. This way, space companies can save up on constructing and managing their servers.

Around 26,700 satellites were orbiting the Earth at the beginning of 2023, a 6.8% increase from the previous year, according to Statista data.

Northwood is anticipating its first satellite connection test later this year.

Mendler started the company with her husband and former Lockheed Martin engineer Griffin Cleverly. She is also pursuing a PhD at MIT and a law degree at Harvard University.