When Yuk Chi Chan set out to build Charter Space in late 2021, it was after a long stretch of pain.
As a mission manager at a satellite bus startup, he coordinated the company’s first demonstration mission — and he had to do it all with critical data scattered across Microsoft Excel.
In addition to managing the internal engineering operations, Chan, a former space lawyer, had to essentially repackage the same critical engineering and program data for different external audiences.
“It was all the same data. It was all about the same physical object,” he told TechCrunch. “I was like, this is nuts … Why shouldn’t I be able to have some sort of unified interface, or some sort of unified data model, that actually represents this thing correctly to whoever’s looking at it?”
That spurred him to found Charter. The company is not so much a dev-tool for aerospace engineers (though it’s used that way), but instead Chan described it as a fintech company for space. The software captures manufacturing and test data directly from the source, and this dataset then feeds an underwriting interface that ties directly in with the six largest insurance carriers in the market.
Charter Space is a Startup Battlefield Top 20 finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, which runs this week in San Francisco.
The goal is faster, cheaper, and more reliable risk evaluation for spacecraft insurance, and eventually to power new forms of credit and non-dilutive funding for space companies looking outside venture capital and the public markets.
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“The biggest technical risk that we’ve had to derisk is really starting to develop that underwriting model and starting to understand, what are the things that matter the most, how should they be weighted, and really starting to layer on that risk analytics piece on top of all the data that we’ve already captured,” Chan said.
He noted that small satellites often fail within the first 90 days in orbit due to some internal technical fault, a pattern the company is trying to capture and price.
Spacecraft insurance is rare. Of the roughly 13,000 satellites on orbit, fewer than 300 are insured, Chan said. Unlike other insurance products, the issue isn’t fraud or misaligned incentives; instead, it is simply the cost of underwriting itself.
Today, operators assemble a tome of technical documentation, submit it to a broker, and then wait for months as that data is ingested by a technical underwriter. That time shows up in premiums: “I’ve heard people getting quoted up to 80%,” Chan said.
Charter is aiming to cut these costs by providing a full picture of all the technical details so that underwriters aren’t spending months assessing a single risk. Instead, more assets can be insured, which means more risk can be pooled and the market overall gets healthier.
“We want more satellites to get insured, because that means that everything as a whole is much, much safer. If we can proliferate insurance coverage, one, that’s good for the space industrial base, a lot more companies have a safety net … But it’s also a lot healthier for the overall economy, because then that encourages global investment from different alternative capital sources,” Chan said. “You’re not solely reliant on VC or some growth equity. You can start bringing in debt, credit, lots of different options that you have in any other sort of advanced industry.”
Charter’s tool is already live with companies and universities; it also has a lighter product for customers that just want the insurance benefit, rather than the full suite of engineering management features.
The company also announced at TechCrunch Disrupt the acquisition of Plover Parametrics, a Y Combinator-backed Insurtech originally focused on climate parametric products. It’s a move that Chan says will let Charter provide “white glove” service by placing policies directly, rather than relying on intermediaries.
The larger picture is unlocking cheaper capital sources for space companies. If underwriting becomes more standardized, that paves the way for more financing options.
“We need to bring in the banks, we need to bring in lenders, because that’s a much more efficient capital source, both on the cost of capital as well as from an incentive standpoint,” Chan said.
If you want to learn more about Charter Space from the company itself — while also checking out dozens of others, hearing their pitches, and listening to guest speakers on four different stages — join us at Disrupt, Monday to Wednesday, in San Francisco. Learn more here.
