August 20, 2026

Letara Raises ¥2.6 Billion in Pre-Series A Round to Accelerate Development of Low-Cost Rocket Engines

Sapporo, Japan, August 20, 2026 - Letara Ltd.(“Letara”) led by co-CEOs, Shota Hirai and Landon Thomas Kamps, today announced the completion of approximately ¥2.6 billion Pre-Series A round through a third-party allotment of shares and other means.

Sapporo, Japan, August 20, 2026 - Letara Ltd.(“Letara”) led by co-CEOs, Shota Hirai and Landon Thomas Kamps, today announced the completion of approximately ¥2.6 billion Pre-Series A round through a third-party allotment of shares and other means. Letara's mission is to build low-cost rocket engines that can “deliver anything, anywhere, within 24 hours.”The round was co-led by Headline Asia, JIC Venture Growth Investments, and Incubate Fund, with the following additional strategic investors:

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(in Japanese alphabetical order)

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Aozora Corporate Investment Co., Ltd.

SMBC Venture Capital Co., Ltd.

NES Corporation

Gogin Capital Co., Ltd.

Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd.

BIG Impact Inc.

Frontier Innovations Inc.

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital Co., Ltd.

Mitsubishi UFJ Capital Co., Ltd.

mint Inc.

Letara is developing a "hybrid rocket engine," which stores fuel (e.g., plastic) and oxidizer separately. Because the propellant does not fall under the legal category of explosives, it is safer than conventional engines that rely on explosive liquid or solid propellants, while also keeping the overall design simple. Hybrid propulsion has been studied for decades, but stable ignition and thrust performance comparable to conventional engines have long been hard to achieve.

Letara's founders solved this through a unique fuel design and manufacturing approach developed at Hokkaido University, which lets the fuel burn stably from end to end for high thrust and consistent combustion. Paired with a patented ignition system that fires reliably even at low power, this achieves thrust performance on par with conventional solid rocket motor or liquid bipropellant systems. Letara has also miniaturized its engines down to palm-sized units, compact enough to integrate into a wide range of small systems. Low-cost, mass-producible, and versatile across satellite launch, on-orbit propulsion, and defense and security applications, this new engine enables cost reduction across a wide variety of applications.

This low-explosivity propellant also uses common, commercially available plastic, easy to source through ordinary supply chains, giving Letara a structure well-suited to mass production and significantly faster, cheaper development and manufacturing.

Since its seed round, Letara has moved quickly on both the technology and business fronts. The company has received orders from rocket and satellite companies as well as from the Japanese government, confirming real market demand. It has also advanced from theSTS to the PCA phase in NEDO's "Deep Tech Startup Support Program (DTSU)" and been registered as both a JAXA Partner Startup and a J-Startup company, third-party recognition of Letara's technology and development capability.

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