SAN FRANCISCO - Zenno Astronautics, a New Zealand startup that thinks superconducting magnets are the bee's knees for spacecraft attitude control and acceleration, has decided to pack its bags and move to the United States.

“It is obvious that most of the global space industry, both commercial and defense, as well as global venture capitalists are here,” Max Arshavsky, Zenno CEO and co-founder, told SpaceNews from Los Angeles, where he was presumably scouting for office space with good kombucha options.

Arshavsky co-founded Zenno in Auckland with Sebastian Wieczorek, chief product officer. The impending relocation follows a June demo of its Z01 Supertorquer, a superconducting magnetic actuator, aboard Impulse Space’s Mira satellite. “It’s the world’s first and most capable magnetic stabilization systems for satellites, and it’s now ready commercially,” Arshavsky said, with the confidence of someone who just aced a demo.

To sell its attitude-control actuator - because satellites need attitude too - and develop new products, Zenno is putting down roots in Los Angeles. “When you look at the map of aerospace companies, they’re insanely dense here in Los Angeles,” Arshavsky said. “I have full confidence that we can make it work here. I’ve seen it done here before, and I understand how it’s been done before.”

While Los Angeles is more expensive than other U.S. cities (shocking, we know), Zenno chose it for access to “partners, customers, investors and talent,” Arshavsky said. Some employees will relocate from New Zealand; the company will also hire locally. By September or October, “we’ll have a facility here to produce our product at a higher scale than is possible in New Zealand and to continue developing new products based on our platform that we’ve pioneered,” Arshavsky said.

Zenno was founded in 2017 on the idea that high-temperature superconductors are promising for space mobility and radiation shielding. “There’s an unlimited amount of energy in space,” Arshavsky said. “We want to make sure that when we go to space, we live off the resources available to us, instead of taking resources from Earth.” Initially, most of Zenno’s tech will stay in Earth orbit, but it has applications for lunar infrastructure. “We look forward to enabling infrastructure on the moon and infrastructure between Earth and the moon,” Arshavsky said.

Zenno raised 10.5 million New Zealand dollars ($6.12 million) in a 2022 seed round. In 2024, Mitsubishi Electric Corp.’s Innovation Fund provided additional capital. “Beyond establishing its headquarters, Zenno is committed to becoming an active contributor to Southern California’s world-class aerospace community,” according to a July 15 news release. Because nothing says community like relocating from the other side of the planet.