megaconstellation

BEIJING — In one of the single largest private funding injections in the history of the Chinese commercial space sector, Hongqing Technology announced on July 2 that it has closed a massive Series B round exceeding 1.3 billion yuan ($191 million).

The blockbuster round brings the company’s total capitalization to more than 2.5 billion yuan ($368 million).

Co-led by the heavy-hitting investment wings of China Construction Bank, ICBC, and Jinpu Capital, the cash injection will be channeled directly into manufacturing operations, automated production pipelines, and R&D for Hongqing’s highly ambitious, 10,000-satellite Honghu-3 low-Earth orbit (LEO) internet network.

The Megaconstellation Landscape: China’s Third Player

By leveraging this capital, Hongqing is positioning itself as the premier commercial alternative to China’s state-directed aerospace primes. In May 2024, the company officially filed the Honghu-3 network architecture with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), mapping out an aggressive network grid:

• Total Planned Fleet: 10,000 satellites
• Orbital Configuration: Distributed across 160 distinct orbital planes
• Strategic Status: Becomes China’s third “10,000-star” megaconstellation filing, trailing only the national state-run Guowang (GW) project and the Shanghai-backed Qianfan (Thousand Sails) grid.

While competitive operators like GalaxySpace feed parts into the Guowang grid and Genesat focuses on the Qianfan line, Hongqing aims to control an entire end-to-end commercial architecture. However, western analysts note that the Honghu-3 constellation has not yet publicly received formal project approval from China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and the company has yet to initiate high-cadence batch deployments.

Redefining Space Finance

The standout feature of Hongqing’s 1.3 billion yuan round is the unprecedented, unified backing of all five major Chinese state banks; including participation from the Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, and Bank of Communications.

This dense consolidation of capital is a direct byproduct of financial rule changes enacted late in the previous policy cycle, which legally empowered bank-controlled Financial Asset Investment Companies (AICs) to bypass typical commercial loan constraints and directly buy equity in high-priority national security and strategic technology startups. This policy shift has effectively turbocharged the Chinese commercial launch and satellite landscape, creating a wave of heavily funded space hardware enterprises marching toward public listings on Shanghai’s high-tech STAR Market.

Vertical Integration: The Landspace-Hongqing Ecosystem

Founded in 2017, Hongqing operates on a structural blueprint that directly mirrors Western players like SpaceX and Starlink. Liquid-methane rocket pioneer Landspace remains Hongqing’s largest corporate shareholder, creating a deeply integrated rocket-satellite alliance.

Landspace & Hongqing Integrated Telemetry & Infrastructure

Securing Order Book Momentum

While the long-term deployment of Honghu-3 remains on the horizon, Hongqing is generating immediate short-term revenue by operating as a component supplier and contract builder for other core domestic constellation lines. 

On May 31, a Long March 2D rocket successfully deployed a direct-to-device (D2D) cellular test satellite engineered by Hongqing.

Following that orbital insertion, Hongqing leadership confirmed that the company has continued to secure complete satellite production orders from institutional state operators, providing a steady commercial buffer as Landspace aggressively standardizes its reusable Zhuque-3 launch architecture to eventually lift Hongqing’s 10,000-satellite network into orbit.