Nazeeh Shaheen, chief operations officer. Courtesy photo.
GOLETA — LaunchPoint Electric Propulsion Solutions, Inc., an innovative aerospace power generation and hybrid-electric propulsion company, announced today that it closed its second round of seed funding fully subscribed.
LaunchPoint specializes in high-specific high-density power electric motor and controller solutions for electric actuation, auxiliary power generation, and thermal management applications in aerospace. The financing enables the company to further invest in key personnel, facilities, and development of new markets addressing the insatiable need for onboard power. The company’s products are designed for jet aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL). The company was recently awarded or competitively down selected for several long-term defense contracts with Tier 1 prime contractors.
“The validation of our technology and additional funding allows us to hire key personnel and expand into larger facilities to support the multi-decade life cycle for our new programs,” said Rob Reali, LaunchPoint’s CEO. “Our genset line of products for UAVs has a growing book of business, so we are investing in supply chain and scaling up production to meet the needs of our customers.”
The company also announced today that it added two new members to the senior leadership team: Nazeeh Shaheen as the Chief Operations Officer and William “Bill” Irby as an Advisory Board Member.
Mr. Nazeeh Shaheen has over three decades of high technology operations experience. His career includes leadership positions in executive management, business development, program management, project engineering, engineering management, operations, quality management systems, regulatory affairs and digital design. Nazeeh has worked most of his career in the defense market but has also performed in leadership roles in the data networking, ocean science and medical device markets. This broad experience base includes very large Tier 1 defense companies as well as building teams at early-stage startups. As the Chief Operations Officer, Nazeeh will serve as an officer of the company and will lead LaunchPoint’s Engineering, Operations, Program Management and QA functions.
William (Bill) Irby, advisory board member.
William (Bill) Irby is Marine Corps veteran and aerospace and defense executive with nearly three decades of experience leading teams and coaching people to achieve profitable growth. He served as Chief Operating Officer of Martin UAV, helping to drive the company’s growth in the defense and commercial markets, and leading its acquisition by Shield AI. Bill then joined the Shield team after serving as a key executive team member achieving a successful close of the sale. His prior roles include President of Reconnaissance Mission Systems at L3Harris Technologies, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Textron Systems’ Unmanned Aircraft Systems business, and Vice President of two business units at Northrop Grumman. He additionally serves as Executive Vice Chair of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI)
— LaunchPoint EPS is located at 5735 Hollister Ave., Suite B, in Goleta. For more information call 805-683-9659 or visit https://www.launchpointEPS.com/.