Astrobotic CEO: $300M acquisition ‘feels like we leveled up’

PITTSBURGH — When asked what Voyager Technologies’ plan to acquires Astrobotic Technology Inc. means for Pittsburgh, John Thornton, the CEO of the North Shore company, said “more.”

On Tuesday morning, Denver-based Voyager Technologies announced its plans to acquire Astrobotic in a deal valued at $300 million, with Astrobotic’s presence remaining in Pittsburgh as an outpost for its lunar program. The deal comes off the heels of NASA furthering plans to fund efforts to establish a permanent base on the lunar surface.

“Big picture, we needed to scale to adjust to opportunities, especially with moon base,” Thornton said in an interview with the Pittsburgh Business Times. “Our competitors, as is fairly well know, are fairly well financed, so we wanted to make sure that in this new opportunity to build a moon base and support NASA that we have the best kind of partner that we can go after and the right kind of support and access to capital. With Voyager, we can basically dump rocket fuel on what we’ve already started here and that’s going to really bring some big opportunities to and wins to Pittsburgh.”

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