Bridgit Mendler

Former Disney Channel star and singer Bridgit Mendler has launched a space technology startup.

Proving to be a woman of many talents, Mendler is now the CEO of Northwood Space which is already attracting high-profile venture investors, with about $6 million in initial funding raised from investors including Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz and

Also Capital.

The former actress shared the news on X, writing “Expect the unexpected!”

Posting on Monday, she wrote: “We have our sights on building a data highway between earth and space.”

She continued: “We are designing shared ground infrastructure from first principles to expand access to space. We have a lot of work ahead of us but that’s the fun part.” Rather than build rockets or satellites, Northwood aims to mass-produce ground stations. Also known as teleports, ground stations are the typically large and often circular antennae that connect to satellites in space. “If you like building quickly and seeing your work deployed in locations around the globe with real impact, we want you at Northwood,” she added.

Mendler “fell in love with space law” at the Federal Communications Commission’s Space Bureau, where she worked in 2022 according to her LinkedIn profile, and came up with the idea for the company during the COVID-19 pandemic with her husband and co-founder, engineer Griffin Cleverly.

In a follow-up post, Mendler surprised her followers by revealing she is a mother to a four-year-old child, whom she adopted in 2021.

“The other news I wanted to share is

I’m a mama to a sweet four-year-old boy,” she wrote in the post. “Started fostering in 2021, adopted near Christmas of 2022. I’m so lucky — being a parent is the biggest gift and most defining experience there is. That’s my news for now folks.”

The “Lemonade Mouth” songstress attended the University of Southern California and received her master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020. She is also pursuing a doctorate at MIT and a law degree at Harvard University, where she was co-president of

the space society.