When Yuk Chi Chan began construction on the charter space in late 2021, it was after a long period of pain.
As a mission manager for a satellite bus startup, he coordinated the company’s first demonstration mission. All of this had to be done with critical data scattered across Microsoft Excel.
In addition to managing internal engineering operations, Chan, a former space lawyer, had to repackage essentially the same critical engineering and program data for various external audiences.
“It was all the same data. It was all about the same physical objects,” he told TechCrunch. “I thought, this is crazy. Why should there be some kind of unified interface, some kind of unified data model, where anyone can accurately represent this?”
That prompted him to found Charter. Chan explained that the company is more of a space fintech company than a development tool for aerospace engineers (although it is used as such). The software captures manufacturing and test data directly from the source, and this dataset is fed into an underwriting interface that works directly with six of the largest insurance companies in the market.
Charter Space is a Startup Battlefield Top 20 finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in San Francisco this week.
The goal is to make risk assessments for spacecraft insurance faster, cheaper, and more reliable, ultimately empowering new forms of credit and non-dilutive financing for space companies looking outside venture capital and public markets.
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“The biggest technical risk we had to hedge was really starting to develop our underwriting models, starting to understand what was most important, how to weight them, and really starting to layer the risk analysis part on top of all the data that we had already collected,” Chan said.
He noted that small satellites often fail within their first 90 days in orbit due to internal technical flaws, and the company is trying to capture this pattern in its pricing.
Spaceship insurance is rare. Of the roughly 13,000 satellites in orbit, fewer than 300 are insured, Chan said. Unlike other insurance products, the problem is not fraud or unfair incentives. Instead, it is simply the cost of the underwriting itself.
Currently, carriers compile vast amounts of technical documentation, submit it to brokers, and then wait months for that data to be ingested by technical underwriters. That time will be reflected in your insurance premium. “I’ve heard estimates of up to 80%,” Chan said.
Charter aims to reduce these costs by providing a holistic view of all technical details so underwriters don’t have to spend months evaluating a single risk. In return, it means more assets can be insured, more risks can be pooled together, and the overall market is healthier.
“We would like to see more satellites insured, because that means everything will be much safer overall. If we can expand insurance coverage, one, it’s good for the space industrial base, more companies have a safety net…but it’s also much healthier for the economy as a whole, because it will encourage global investment from a variety of alternative capital sources,” said Chan. “We can’t just rely on venture capital and growth stocks. We can start introducing different options like debt and credit that we have in other advanced industries.”
Charter’s tools are already being used by businesses and universities. We also offer lighter products for customers who only need insurance benefits rather than a full suite of engineering management features.
At TechCrunch Disrupt, the company also announced the acquisition of Plover Parametrics, a Y Combinator-backed insurtech originally focused on climate parametric products. Chan said this will allow Charter to provide a “white glove” service by signing insurance contracts directly rather than relying on intermediaries.
The bigger picture is securing cheaper sources of capital for space companies. As underwriting becomes more standardized, there will be more financing options.
“We need to bring in banks and lenders because that is a much more efficient source of capital, both from a cost of capital and incentive perspective,” Chan said.
If you want to learn more about Charter Space from the company itself, check out dozens of other companies, hear their pitches, and hear from guest speakers on four different stages, join us at Disrupt in San Francisco from Monday through Wednesday. Click here for more information.
