Inside a sparkling new building in northern Etobicoke, on an otherwise well-worn and unassuming industrial street, the newest entrant in Canada’s space race is building the team and the rocket engine it needs to reach the stars.
BetaKit recently toured the 7,400-square-foot Toronto facility that Canada Rocket Company (CRC) moved into a month and a half ago. The modern-looking hub houses both an office area featuring the fanciest water machine this reporter has ever encountered—“a key to recruitment”—and a lab where CRC has already begun developing and testing its technology.
Hugh Kolias, CRC
“You can build all the satellites you want, but if you can’t send them to space … why are you even producing them in the first place?”
While CRC has yet to fill the building, it is already running low on parking, and co-founder and CEO Hugh Kolias expects the startup will soon hit maximum capacity, sending him on a hunt for even more space: CRC is already planning a 500,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.
Twelve months ago, CRC did not exist. But as Prime Minister Mark Carney noted earlier this year, “The world has changed.” After decades of relying heavily on the US for protection, an intensifying trade war has spurred the Government of Canada to shore up its own defence capabilities.
That interest has extended to space, where CRC and others envision a future in which Canada no longer needs to hitch rides with foreign providers. Satellites play an important role in everything from Earth-based communication and navigation to observation, making the ability to launch them of strategic national importance. Canada needs successful domestic rocket builders to launch its own satellites and ensure its economic sovereignty and security amid shifting geopolitical conditions.
On the back of this renewed federal interest in the stars, CRC hopes to build a Canadian alternative to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The US aerospace firm plans to scale back its third-party rideshare program and focus more on its own payloads. That makes the stakes for CRC high—but Kolias tells BetaKit that he thinks the company is positioned to meet the moment.
Fuelling up for a seven-year journey
During the first 10 months of what Kolias anticipates will be at least a seven-year journey toward getting its tech to orbit, CRC has moved quickly. Since incorporating in November 2025, the startup has grown from just Kolias and co-founder and CTO David Tenny to 34 employees; it has secured approximately $22.5 million CAD ($16.5 million USD) from private investors and the federal government, a “substantial sum” generally for any company of its age, let alone one building rockets in Canada; and it has moved into this new facility.
Canadian Rocket Company
By the end of 2026, CRC hopes to close a larger round, find a space big enough for it to build a full-scale rocket, and begin testing some of its engine components. Kolias claims that would make it one of the quickest companies globally to do this much in such a short time.
CRC, which was recently featured in BetaKit Most Ambitious, emerged from stealth in January with $6.2 million CAD ($4.5 million USD) in seed funding, outlining plans to build reusable methalox-powered rockets. The funding was co-led by the Business Development Bank of Canada and Garage Capital, with support from Ripple Ventures, Panache Ventures, Northside Ventures, and Cold Capital, among others.
In May, the feds committed nearly $225 million CAD towards establishing sovereign space launch capacity. This included $8.3 million CAD apiece in grants from the Department of National Defence for CRC and two of its domestic peers—fellow Toronto firm NordSpace and Québec’s Reaction Dynamics—to fuel their development efforts.
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A couple of months ago, CRC closed a previously unannounced, $6-million USD ($8-million CAD) seed extension through a simple agreement for future equity from a combination of undisclosed new and existing backers (“you can never have too much money” when you’re building rockets, Kolias said), and the company moved into this Etobicoke hub shortly thereafter in early July.
While the space is already filled with whiteboards covered in colourful calculations and becoming more crowded with employees and equipment by the day, it does not yet feel entirely lived in. Based on CRC’s current pace, that could change fast.
Aiming to be “the fastest in Canada”
Kolias studied mechanical engineering before building and selling his own proptech startup, a multi-family rental software platform called Yuhu, while Tenny previously spent nearly a decade as an engineer with SpaceX, where he worked on the Falcon 9. Between him and the rest of CRC’s team, the company boasts 150 years of collective orbital launch experience from firms like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab.
Kolias said CRC has focused on bringing in “people who’ve seen it and done it before.” Twenty-eight of CRC’s employees have or are moving to Toronto, 10 of whom are repatriated Canadians, with the rest joining from the US and Europe.
Kolias thinks that CRC can get to space with a larger, medium-lift orbital launch vehicle faster than its peers on the strength of its team, pace, approach, and fundraising prowess.
“We will get to orbit the fastest in Canada,” Kolias said.
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CRC was initially targeting a payload capacity of 6,500 kilograms, with plans to design a light-lift vehicle first to establish a foundation for the medium-lift rocket it later intended to build. Since then, Kolias said CRC has moved straight to medium lift amid shifts in the global launch market—namely, the retirement of the Falcon 9 and large increases in sovereign and commercial constellations—and a need for speed.
As it typically takes seven to eight years to get rockets to market, Kolias said starting small would mean a 16-year journey to medium lift. CRC is now targeting 2032 for its first R-2 launch, and Kolias expects it will need as much as $660 million USD to get there.
Today, the biggest difference between CRC and other more established Canadian aerospace firms like NordSpace and Reaction Dynamics, Kolias said, is that they are building launch vehicles capable of carrying around 1,000 kilograms, while CRC is targeting 12,000-kg. payloads—a higher-risk, higher-reward pursuit. Given this, Kolias does not view them as competition. Kolias argued that being late to the party gives CRC the chance to bring on talent who has done this elsewhere from the earliest stages.
Another differentiator is CRC’s use of methalox (liquid methane and liquid oxygen), which Kolias thinks will be a key enabler of rapid reuse and will help make its underlying economics work.
At the moment, Elon Musk’s SpaceX dominates the market for sending large payloads to space, and competition among small-lift providers is fierce. Kolias and his Canadian rocket-building colleagues have argued that medium-lift launch vehicles—an area many long thought would become oversupplied thanks to SpaceX—is where the true opportunity lies for Canada.
While Kolias thinks there could also be room for a light-lift launch entrant, he believes Canada’s medium-lift market will be “winner takes all,” something he said has “played out in almost all international markets” to date.
Medium-lift capabilities are typically defined as launch vehicles that can deliver 2,000 to 20,000 kg. worth of cargo to low Earth orbit, where most satellites reside. With demand expected to grow in the coming years, Kolias sees room for Canada to capture a significant share of this market.
“We will get to orbit the fastest in Canada.”
Hugh Kolias, CRC
SpaceX and other major launch providers focusing on their own supply means less room for third parties, including Canadian satellite builders and operators, into which the government has poured billions of dollars.
“You can build all the satellites you want, but if you can’t send them to space … why are you even producing them in the first place?” Kolias said.
The CEO thinks there is a massive, as-yet untapped opportunity for aspiring rocket builders like CRC, and he is betting that initial speed to market, rather than technological innovation, will be the primary determinant of success.
Aerospace engineering is no easy feat. The path to building rockets is long and arduous, and microscopic errors can lead to spectacular failures. That’s why CRC is keeping it as simple as possible. As Kolias put it, CRC is not trying to be “a special snowflake” out of the gate.
The startup does not plan to “over-iterate” on tech in the meantime, and he said it will gladly trade performance in order to leverage local components and enable easier manufacturing. It’s a focus that’s reflected in every step of the clean, uncluttered space of its Etobicoke facility.
CRC’s goal is to “get to space first with a large enough vehicle that gives you that flexibility and room to increase capacity and take part of the market,” Kolias said. “Our differentiation is being undifferentiated.”
Feature image courtesy Canada Rocket Company.