Astro Mechanica is getting off the ground with new offices in San Francisco.
The aerospace engineering startup leased the entire 550 7th Street building in Showplace Square, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
Manhattan Beach-based Vantage Property Investors bought the 21,500-square-foot building in 2016 for nearly $4 million when it was a one-story distribution center for Golden Gate Meat Company. It then renovated and expanded the building into a two-story office and creative manufacturing hub, according to the Business Times
It’s a notable upgrade in space for the four-year-old Astro Mechanica. Its current offices are a block away in a roughly 4,000-square-foot building at 19 Butte Place.
Vantage finished the renovation during the pandemic and 550 7th Street has remained vacant ever since. The property features manufacturing space on the ground floor and office space on its second and mezzanine levels. Over the spring and summer, an artificial intelligence company, a robotics company, general technology companies and one tenant that needed space for three-dimensional printers for prototyping toured the property, according to the Business Times.
Astro Mechanica is working to create a new jet engine that would enable commercial supersonic flights to return to the skies. The company was founded by CEO Ian Brooke in 2021 and raised a $27.1 million round of funding this spring, per the Business Times. Last month, the company secured an undisclosed investment from United Airlines’ venture capital arm. United in particular has already committed to a forthcoming supersonic flight rebirth, pledging to buy 15 planes from Boom Supersonic with the hope of starting commercial supersonic flights by the end of the decade.
The $27.1 million raised will be used to build out Astro Mechanica’s software team, further develop and test its jet engine prototype, and launch a team to start building airframes, Brooke told Tectonic in April. The funding will also enable Astro Mechanica to pursue government contracts. Its goal is to establish the first supersonic commercial flight at a price point similar to existing air travel within the next decade.— Chris Malone Méndez
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