SpaceX vet raises $65M to pull cabling harnesses out of the Cold War era

When Senra CEO Jordan Black was a SpaceX engineer, he took on the job of scaling up the company’s cabling and wire harnesses to support production of Starship, the company’s next-generation rocket.

Wire harnesses are what they sound like: the internal electrical cabling that runs through a rocketship, car, plane, or tractor and becomes increasingly important the smarter those vehicles get. They’re bespoke, put together by technicians who are, functionally, experienced craftspeople.

“I travelled all over the world to go visit wire harness companies,” Black said last month. “It really hasn’t changed since the Cold War era of wooden tables [and] manual processes.”

Black and co-founder Benjamin Shanahan started Senra in 2023 to offer a more modern solution to vehicle manufacturers. Today, the startup is announcing a $65 million Series B round, co-led by Lowercarbon and Interlagos with participation from General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Founders Fund, among others.

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Senra isn’t looking to take humans out of the handmaking process - at least not while robots find manipulating wires a challenge and relevant training data remains scarce. Instead, it’s turning to software tools and other forms of automation to modernise aspects of the traditional manual work.

The company is benefiting from the surge of money into US manufacturing, particularly the defence industrial base. While Black couldn’t disclose customers, he said they include builders of “anything from submarines and maritime vehicles, to defence vehicle systems on land, to launch vehicles, to satellites.”

If it doesn’t sound immediately important, consider a recent wire harness disaster. In 2023, Boeing discovered that its Starliner spacecraft’s wiring was held together with flammable tape, forcing an expensive delay while the entire wiring system was redone.

Black points to that experience as a reason to raise the standards for wire harnessing, using automated systems to track materials and engineering changes.

“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,” he said.

Senra uses Amp, a proprietary software platform, to standardise the inputs throughout the wiring process and produce a digital twin to guide its technicians, who are trained by the company in what Black says is the only federally certified wire harness training program. The company is also, as it scales, finding ways to automate more of the process.

“It goes back to the Elon principle of, ‘automation is last,’” Black said. “We’re working on it now, but a lot of it the standardisation and the foundation building that made SpaceX be able to scale something like rockets, which you could only build one a year if you were lucky, and now they do hundreds a year.”

Senra - which, by the way, is “harness” spelled backwards, minus the “h” and “s,” because Black says the company takes the “horsesh*t” out of harnesses - produces 1,000 each month across two different factories and plans to increase production to 10,000 a month in 2027.

First published on Fanatical Futurist on 15 July 2026.

311 Intelligence

What this means

Analysis by the 311 Strategic Intelligence Unit

The big shift is from craft wiring to software-led wiring. Wire harnesses are still bespoke and built by hand on manual processes that, in Jordan Black's words, have not changed since the Cold War. Senra keeps the skilled technicians but puts every input into one software platform and a digital twin. We rate Digital Twins, live virtual copies of real machines and processes, a Prepare technology with wide use expected by 2030, and we track Product Traceability, firms tracking every product from source to disposal, as an Act now trend.

What it means by sector.

• Aerospace and defence: Senra's customers include builders of submarines, land defence vehicles, launch vehicles and satellites. Boeing's Starliner delay, caused by wiring held together with flammable tape, shows how one small input can become a costly failure.
• Manufacturing: Senra trains its own technicians rather than relying on robots, which still find manipulating wires a challenge. We track the Factory Skills Gap, manufacturers unable to find enough technicians and engineers, as an Act now trend.
• Automotive and agriculture: harnesses run through cars, planes and tractors, and matter more the smarter those vehicles get. Standardised, tracked wiring is a foundation for smarter machines.

What to do now.

• Map where your products depend on hand-built wiring or other bespoke craft work, and who in your supply chain does it.
• Ask suppliers how they track materials and engineering changes, and whether that record sits in one system.
• Invest in training technicians alongside automation: Senra shows the human craft step is not going away yet.

The Starburst technologies behind this story

From the 311 Technology Starburst (first product, expected wide use and readiness):

Technology	Category	First product	Wide use	Action	TRL
Digital Twins	User Interfaces	2015	2030	Prepare	9
Robots	Robotics	1956	2032	Explore	9
General Purpose Robots	Robotics	2026	2039	Watch	6

And the trends they feed, from the 311 Trends Starburst:

Trend	Wide use	Action
Product Traceability	2024	Act now
Factory Skills Gap	2021	Act now
Factory Digital Twins	2030	Prepare
Labour Shortage Automation	2028	Prepare

How this moves the trend

We have tracked the move to automated, software-run production for years. In 2017 Foxconn unveiled plans for fully autonomous factories, and in 2021 BMW used AI and simulation to build a virtual factory. Senra takes the same standardisation that helped SpaceX scale rockets and applies it to the wiring inside them.

Go deeper with 311

• The 311 Starburst Centre: every technology and trend above, with timelines and readiness.
• 311 Vantage: ask what software-led manufacturing means for your organisation and get a plain English executive brief.
• The Exponential Technology Codex and the Annual Trends Codex: the technologies and trends reshaping every industry.
• Book a briefing or keynote on the future of manufacturing and automation for your board or leadership team.