SpaceX vet's Senra raises $65M Series B to modernise wire harnesses

What's the deal? Senra Systems, a US startup building modern electrical wire harnesses for vehicle manufacturers, has raised a $65 million Series B round. Lowercarbon CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and InterlagosDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → co-led, with participation from General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Founders Fund. Co-founder and chief executive officer Jordan BlackDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → is a former SpaceX engineer who scaled the company's harnesses for its Starship rocket.

What's the endgame? Wire harnesses — the internal electrical cabling in rockets, cars, planes, and tractors — are still built by hand on methods Black says have not changed since the Cold War. Senra Systems, founded in 2023, keeps humans in the process but uses software and automation to modernise the manual craft.

Why now? The company is riding a surge of money into US manufacturing, particularly the defence industrial base. Black would not name customers, but said they build "anything from submarines and maritime vehicles, to defense vehicle systems on land, to launch vehicles, to satellites."

What could go wrong? Poor wiring carries real risk. In 2023, BoeingDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → found its Starliner spacecraft's wiring was held together with flammable tape, forcing an expensive delay to redo the entire system.

Senra Systems runs a proprietary software platform, Amp, to standardise inputs across the wiring process and produce a digital twin to guide technicians. "Having it all in the same software is probably the most important thing, because it's all the little inputs that happen that can make a catastrophic change down the road," Black said. The company trains its technicians through what Black calls the only federally certified wire harness training program.

Senra Systems now produces 1,000 harnesses a month across two factories and plans to reach 10,000 a month in 2027.

The signal: The round sits in the top 5% of US Series B deals by size all-time, a signal of investor appetite for startups modernising the manufacturing base rather than replacing its workers. Black frames the automation as gradual: "It goes back to the Elon principle of, 'automation is last.'"

Read more: TechCrunch