The 18 Aerospace & Space companies that produced the most founders (2026)

A founder factory is a company whose people leave to start companies of their own. This ranks every company in the graph by how many of its alumni — people who founded it or worked there — went on to found at least one company, counting only ventures started no earlier than the company itself.

Refreshed 2026-09-13 · updates nightly

#	Company	Sector	HQ	Founded	Founders	Companies started
1	SpaceX	Aerospace & Space	Hawthorne, USA	2002	11	24
2	Anduril	Aerospace & Space	Costa Mesa, USA	2017	7	6
3	Epirus	Aerospace & Space	—	—	6	17
4	Anduril Industries	Aerospace & Space	Costa Mesa, USA	2017	6	5
5	Blue Origin	Aerospace & Space	Kent, USA	2000	6	5
6	Virgin Galactic	Aerospace & Space	United States	2004	3	6
7	Privateer Space	Aerospace & Space	—	—	2	5
8	MarketHQ	Aerospace & Space	United States	2024	2	4
9	Archer Aviation	Aerospace & Space	San Jose, USA	2018	2	3
10	Blue Water Autonomy	Aerospace & Space	—	—	2	3
11	STARK	Aerospace & Space	—	—	2	2
12	STARK Defence	Aerospace & Space	—	—	2	2
13	ABL Space Systems	Aerospace & Space	El Segundo, USA	2017	2	1
14	Chaos Industries	Aerospace & Space	—	—	2	1
15	Lodestar	Aerospace & Space	United Kingdom	—	2	1
16	Lodestar Space	Aerospace & Space	—	—	2	1
17	Long Wall	Aerospace & Space	—	—	2	1
18	Spaceium	Aerospace & Space	—	—	2	1

How this is counted. A person counts as an alumnus of a company if they founded it or worked there. They count towards the company’s score if they went on to found at least one other company that was started no earlier than the company itself. Universities and other non-commercial organisations are pruned from the graph where we can identify them. Data is community-corrected — fix something.