Betting on full carbon fiber arrow bodies and full-flow liquid oxygen methane engines, Micro Light Launch has secured hundreds of millions in Angel+ funding

China Financial News 3月31日讯 (Reporter 梁祥才) Beijing Microlight Launch Technology Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as “Microlight Launch”), which is focused on the “all-carbon-fiber arrow body + all-flow liquid oxygen methane engine” technical route, has recently completed a RMB 20k+ angel round + Series A financing.

China Financial News reporters learned from Microlight Launch that this round was led by Qifu Capital and Yichen Capital, with Lihe Venture Capital participating in the investment; the funds will be mainly used for the company’s engineering development of its all-carbon-fiber rocket “Microlight One” and the all-flow liquid oxygen methane engine “Huaguang One.”

According to publicly available information, Qifu Capital had previously invested in Aerospace Hongtu (688066.SH), a domestic leader in satellite remote sensing, BlueStar Optics (a supplier of inter-satellite laser communication), and a company called Chuangzhe that has bet on the development of reusable spacecraft and space tourism operations.

An executive from Microlight Launch said that by the end of February 2026, the company had completed manufacturing and verification of the country’s first engineering unit of a liquid oxygen methane carbon-fiber common-bottom storage tank. The product uses a T800-class all-carbon-fiber solution without an internal liner. The verification results the company provided are: compared with traditional materials, the structure mass is reduced by 30%, the production cycle is shortened by 90%, and the cost is about 70% of that of traditional materials.

It should be noted that the tank is a core structural component of the rocket’s airframe; its weight and cost directly affect launch payload efficiency and the launch quotation. Between engineering-unit verification and mass production of flight-ready assemblies, there are still reliability assessment and environmental adaptability testing and other steps; the final performance will need to be confirmed through subsequent engine test firings and flight test verification.

As for the engines, for “Huaguang One,” the key components of the all-flow engine have completed liquid-flow tests, and the company plans to complete end-to-end system test firing in 2026.

Microlight Launch has clearly set market-based pricing goals for the “Microlight One” rocket: the per-launch price for a once-use rocket is below 20k yuan/kg, and the price for a recoverable and reusable rocket is below 5,000 yuan/kg. At the same time, the company has set an internal target that the gross margin rate will be 60% or higher as its core goal for product R&D.

By way of comparison, in today’s global commercial launch market, the single-launch cost of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle is about $5,000 per kg. In China, Yang Haoliang, General Chief Commander of Zhongke Aerospace’s Lijian 2, told China Financial News reporters recently that currently, for the Lijian 2 launch vehicle, the single-launch cost without recovery is 30k yuan per kg, and after achieving recovery, the cost is also expected to drop to about half of the single-launch cost of SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Of note, the above-mentioned Microlight Launch quote is a forward-looking target. The company’s timeline is: achieving full commercial operations for the carbon-fiber rockets in 2028; conducting recovery tests in 2029; and achieving commercial operations for reusable rockets in 2030.