Initially I think it was out of their own pockets, and they had a bunch of keen volunteers, who were also launching 'pong sats' high altitude balloons for highs

Initially I think it was out of their own pockets, and they had a bunch of keen volunteers, who were also launching 'pong sats' high altitude balloons for highschool science experiments. While I was around the went from launching rockets out of boxes at ground level to doing it 20 miles up. More recently I think they've had some DoD funding