Hundred-billion-dollar unicorn Galaxy Aerospace rushes to IPO, with Ge Weidong and Lei Jun staying in the background

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On March 30, Galaxy Aerospace completed the IPO tutoring/mentoring filing with the Beijing CSRC office, with the mentoring institution being Huatai United Securities.

As a “new aristocrat” in the commercial space sector, Galaxy Aerospace has completed eight rounds of financing since its founding. In addition to attracting support from top-tier institutions such as Hillhouse Capital and IDG Capital, it has also brought “olive branches” from big names like Ge Weidong and Lei Jun.

From a valuation perspective, since the A+ round in November 2018, Galaxy Aerospace’s “valuation” has grown from dozens of billions to 32 billion. This means that early investors such as Ge Weidong and Lei Jun have made substantial profits. And once it successfully goes public, Galaxy Aerospace’s valuation in the secondary market also has room to be further elevated.

01

Galaxy Aerospace scaling up for an IPO at the 10-billion-yuan level

With commercial space heating up as a catalyst, another unicorn valued at over 10 billion is launching an IPO.

On March 30, Galaxy Aerospace completed the IPO tutoring/mentoring filing with the Beijing CSRC office, with the mentoring institution being Huatai United Securities. Public information shows that Galaxy Aerospace was established in April 2018. It is a satellite internet solution provider and satellite manufacturer committed to independent R&D and low-cost mass production of communication payloads, key standalone units, and satellite platforms.

In addition, Galaxy Aerospace also undertakes the task of developing and building the 07th-satellite batch of the SGCC Constellation (GW Constellation) satellite internet (a group of seven satellites). This is also the first time a private commercial space company has mass-developed such satellites. The group of satellites was successfully launched in August 2025.

And behind commercialization, R&D and manufacturing capabilities must go hand in hand. At present, the company has built internationally leading R&D and manufacturing capability for communication payloads, key standalone units, and solar arrays in Xi’an, Chengdu, and Beijing, and is constructing a new-generation satellite smart manufacturing plant in Nantong, enabling mass production capabilities for 100 satellites.

As of January 19, 2026, Galaxy Aerospace has successfully launched more than 40 technical-advanced satellites that it developed independently, including the world’s first high-frequency low-orbit millimeter-wave satellite; China’s first batch-developed low-orbit broadband communication satellites; China’s first flat-stackable satellite using flexible solar arrays; mass-developed SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellites; and mid-to-high atmospheric limb-detection remote sensing satellites, among others.

With its advanced technology level and strong mass-production capability, Galaxy Aerospace has also earned recognition from many customers and successfully secured orders on the scale of several billion.

02

Ge Weidong and Lei Jun lay low behind the scenes

As a “new aristocrat” in private commercial space, Galaxy Aerospace was born with all the advantages.

Not long after Galaxy Aerospace was founded, Lei Jun—Chairman of the board of Cheetah Mobile, founder Xu Ming’s former employer—through Shunwei Capital, extended an olive branch and participated in the Series A round. Also joining as co-investors were Wuyuan Capital and IDG Capital.

After receiving investments from Lei Jun and other backers, Galaxy Aerospace quickly saw a “breakthrough.” In October 2018, the company successfully sent the spaceborne high-performance computing and space imaging test payload “Yquan No.1” into space. The following year, the Galaxy Aerospace team successfully developed low-orbit spaceborne payloads in the Q/V band, as well as China’s first 10Gbps-capacity low-orbit satellite communication system, which has the feasibility of low cost and mass replication.

As Galaxy Aerospace continued to grow, the company started financing again in 2020. In the B+ round, Chaos Investment—under Ge Weidong—also joined in, and 经纬中国 (Sequoia China), CICC Capital, Shunwei, Wuyuan, and Junlian Capital continued to co-invest. After this round, the company’s valuation rose to 8 billion. In September 2022, Chaos Investment again participated in the company’s B++ round financing, showing Ge Weidong’s strong preference for Galaxy Aerospace.

As time moved to early 2026, SpaceX’s listing plans made domestic commercial space companies “hot picks” in both primary and secondary markets, and investors began to scramble for related companies that had not yet gone public.

Galaxy Aerospace is naturally one of the beneficiaries. Its pre-investment valuation in the C round was close to 17 billion, and it planned to raise 2–3 billion. Ultimately, the participating parties included not only the Beijing Jingguo Guanshi Equity Investment Fund, Wuxi Liangxi Sci-Tech Innovation Fund, Yizhuang Guotou, Wuxi Transportation Group, Hefei Chengtou, the Beijing commercial space and low-altitude economy industry investment fund, but also a group of investors that had participated in multiple previous rounds.

After this round, Galaxy Aerospace’s valuation rose to 32 billion. In less than 8 years, the company’s valuation has increased 10-fold. Early investors—Shunwei, led by Lei Jun, and Chaos led by Ge Weidong—reaped substantial gains.

03

Cheetah Mobile CEO Xu Ming’s second startup

Xu Ming, a master’s graduate from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology—top among the “Seven Sons of National Defense,”—served as Cheetah Mobile’s CTO and CEO. He started his business 6 years in total, and in 2014 led Cheetah Mobile to list on the New York Stock Exchange.

From interviews and records in earlier years, it’s known that when Xu Ming was a child, the signal coverage in his hometown was not very developed, so he had an intense desire for interconnection of signals. In 2011, Xu Ming, by coincidence, watched a documentary about the Hubble Space Telescope. Through Hubble, he saw the dazzling remnants of the universe’s big bang and the distant yet clear existence of nebulae, like the existence of Inception’s dream world. From then on, Xu Ming began to conceive the idea of establishing an ambiguous original intent to interact with deep space through equipment.

At that time, 5G had just begun to普及 (be widely rolled out), and in areas such as oceans and deserts, it was difficult to cover base stations. Based on this, Xu Ming set a goal to do a business providing global 5G satellite communication services. It had been only about 1 year since Musk publicly disclosed the concept of SpaceX Starlink, and Boeing first revealed its satellite internet plan.

At age 40, in April 2018, Xu Ming’s Galaxy Aerospace officially began operations in Beijing’s Haidian district. At that time, in China, only some defense-industry institutes were tasked with tackling technical challenges related to low-orbit satellites. Globally, low-orbit satellites were still in the planning + R&D stage, and industry professional talent was “rare.”

To find such talent, Xu Ming returned to his alma mater, HIT, to invite professors. He invited Deng Zongquan to serve as chair of the technical committee, and Zhang Shijie to serve as chief scientist. Deng Zongquan is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and deputy president of HIT. He is also the director of the defense key discipline laboratory for aerospace institutions and control technology. Zhang Shijie is a professor at HIT and a doctoral supervisor. He has worked for more than 20 years in the field of small satellite system-level design and development, and has participated in the development of multiple small satellite models.

They had professional talent who understood manufacturing, but the company still lacked an internet and business leader. Therefore, Xu Ming recruited two people from his former employer, Cheetah Mobile—Chang Ming and Gao Qianfeng. Chang Ming is responsible for artificial intelligence algorithms, while Gao Qianfeng is responsible for global business expansion.

From the shareholder list, Deng Zongquan and Zhang Shijie do not directly hold shares in Galaxy Aerospace. Instead, Chang Ming and Gao Qianfeng hold shares in Galaxy Aerospace through the employee shareholding platform “Nantong Mantian Yixing Information Technology.”

In addition, the other two individual shareholderst at the company’s founding—Dai Xuguang (a former Alibaba engineer and a friend in Xu Ming’s tech circle) and Shen Ronghua (one of the founders and an initial founder shareholder)—held shares in Galaxy Aerospace through the employee shareholding platform “Xi’an Xingji Communications.”

2026 is the 8th year of Xu Ming’s second entrepreneurship, and also the year when Galaxy Aerospace officially moves forward with its IPO. Whether for Xu Ming or for Galaxy Aerospace, this IPO push is an important leap.

Source丨Global Tiger Finance

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