Toyota spends about 7 billion yen to enter the space sector
IT home January 10 news, Toyota announced on Tuesday local time, its research department will invest in Japan's space startup Interstellar Technologies (IST), to support the large-scale production of its rockets, expanding its exploration in the field of space.
Toyota subsidiary Woven invested about 7 billion yen in IST (IT home note: currently about 325 million yuan), officially entering the space field.
As part of the capital and business partnership, Woven will appoint a director to IST's board of directors and support rocket production by strengthening supply chain and corporate governance, IST said in a statement.
It's worth noting that Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda said in a speech at CES 2025, “The future of mobility shouldn't be confined to the Earth, or to one car company. When it comes to the sky, we are also exploring rockets.”
In addition to rockets, Toyota is working with Japan's national space agency, JAXA, to build a lunar rover that could take astronauts to the surface of the moon. The lunar rover will be used in the NASA-led Artemis program.
In 2019, Hokkaido-based IST became the first Japanese company to send a commercially developed rocket into space, but its orbital rocket Zero is still under development.
IST's rival Space One attempted a second launch of its orbital rocket Kairos last month, but the launch failed.
The Japanese government aims to launch 30 rockets a year by the early 1930s, making Japan “Asia's space center” with an 8 trillion yen space industry and subsidies for startups such as IST and Space One.