Tag: EC Space Tech

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As tensions build, Silicon Valley’s Chinese affiliates invest in sensitive space tech

Chinese subsidiaries of American venture capital firms are investing money from U.S.-based funds into Chinese space startups, even as the Pentagon warns of Beijing’s growing activity in the space arena, according to data reviewed by TechCrunch. 

The data, collected by PitchBook, includes information on past limited partners and investments of the Chinese units of Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Space industry investments represent a very small but notable portion of these firms’ portfolios, with Sequoia Capital China and Lightspeed China investing in two companies each and Matrix China investing in eight. Startups that have landed funding include companies working on launch, satellite manufacturing and Earth observation. 

According to recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal and Politico, the White House is considering new screening requirements on U.S. investment flowing to foreign-based technologies that could be sensitive to national security, like semiconductors, though it’s unclear whether space technologies would be considered as part of a future order. But one investor, who asked to remain anonymous, citing co-investments with Sequoia Capital, told TechCrunch that the stakes are high.

As tensions build, Silicon Valley’s Chinese affiliates invest in sensitive space tech by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

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Silicon Valley goes to war

At Andreessen Horowitz’s recent American Dynamism summit, Hadrian founder and CEO Chris Power painted a picture of the country in peril. “I’m here to talk to you about an existential risk to the future of the Republic and how Hadrian is trying to solve it,” he began.

His words – a mix of rationalism and Marcus Aurelius – were not out of place at the event, which brought together a blend of investors, founders, policymakers and other Washington officials to discuss issues facing the country. A notable number of talks were related to defense and national security, in line with the American Dynamism team’s investment portfolio, which includes bets on defense tech startups like Hadrian, Anduril and Shield AI.

Just a few years ago, many investors thought that cutting a check for a defense-first startup was a proposition that simply didn’t make sense. The tides have clearly shifted: a16z is one of many firms that’s taken a stronger interest in defense and national security. PitchBook data supports this warming to defense tech. From January to October last year, VC-backed firms injected $7 billion into aerospace and defense companies, a massive growth that stands in sharp contrast to the relative sluggishness in other sectors. Some deals in recent months include Anduril’s $1.4 billion Series E; Shield AI’s $225 million Series E; and Vannevar Labs’ $75 million Series B.

There are many reasons for this uptick in interest in defense tech, but driving all of them is a new, realist vision that’s spread among some technologists and venture capitalists. It sees global antagonisms threatening the stability of Pax Americana; it sees the United States rotting from the inside out due to bloat and lethargy. As a result, the Silicon Valley mentality has returned to its defense roots, embracing the role that venture-funded startups can play in maintaining America’s military dominance and technological supremacy around the world.

“If you believe in democracy, democracy demands a sword,” a16z general partner David Ulevitch said in a recent interview with TechCrunch. And Silicon Valley will be where it is forged.

Silicon Valley goes to war by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

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7 space tech predictions for 2023

Mark Boggett Contributor
Mark Boggett is the CEO and co-founder of the Seraphim Space Manager LLP, the world's first listed fund focused on space tech.

Cell phone connectivity from space

Multiple players in the industry have recently set their sights on direct-to-mobile connectivity from space. While it’s still a very early market with limited existing capabilities, companies such as Apple, T-Mobile, Globalstar, SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile and Lynk Global are targeting this area. Multiple mobile network operators are already on board, even before some of the first operational spacecraft have been launched.

Apple has partnered with Globalstar to provide SOS connectivity with its new iPhone 14, and T-Mobile is planning to begin low-earth orbit (LEO) connectivity in 2023 through SpaceX, which recently filed an application with the US FCC to include direct-to-cellular capabilities in its Gen 2 Starlink satellites. Amazon is also set to launch its first batch of LEO satellites for Project Kuiper.

Most of these early projects will not provide high-speed broadband from space, and will instead offer low-bandwidth connectivity suitable for emergency calls and texts. All of this aims to service the currently underserved population around the world, which does not live within reach of traditional cell tower networks.

Commercialization of the moon begins in earnest

Despite the economic uncertainty, we believe new records will be established in spacetech as giant commercial projects get funded.

Extensive government and commercial efforts are underway to head “back to the Moon” decades after the Apollo program finished in 1972. This has been kicked off by NASA’s Artemis program, which saw the Artemis 1 mission’s Orion capsule returning to Earth after spending almost a month traveling around the Moon.

At almost the same time, the first fully-privately-funded lunar mission was launched by SpaceX for Japanese company iSpace, which is taking a fuel-efficient trip to the Moon and is due to get there in April. This would be the first fully commercial mission to land on the Moon, a milestone in the cooperation between Japan and the U.S. in space. Other commercial companies, such as Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic, are also targeting Moon landings.

With the first commercial companies headed moonward alongside national efforts, we expect 2023 to be a breakthrough year for the cislunar ecosystem.

Three drivers underpin revenue growth

Developments in the defense, cybersecurity and climate sectors will prove to be strong tailwinds for revenues in spacetech in 2023. Record growth in defense budgets driven by the war in Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions will drive business, and governments’ increasing desire for sovereign capability from space assets will lead to some huge orders in the sector. And, since cybersecurity is another tool in the geopolitical toolbox, satellite resilience against attacks is a priority.

A growing reliance on datasets generated in orbit means the security demands for the flow of data from the satellite to the cloud and ground stations are growing exponentially. We see 2023 as the year when the industry embraces quantum capabilities.

7 space tech predictions for 2023 by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

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7 space tech predictions for 2023

Mark Boggett Contributor
Mark Boggett is the CEO and co-founder of the Seraphim Space Manager LLP, the world's first listed fund focused on space tech.

Cell phone connectivity from space

Multiple players in the industry have recently set their sights on direct-to-mobile connectivity from space. While it’s still a very early market with limited existing capabilities, companies such as Apple, T-Mobile, Globalstar, SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile and Lynk Global are targeting this area. Multiple mobile network operators are already on board, even before some of the first operational spacecraft have been launched.

Apple has partnered with Globalstar to provide SOS connectivity with its new iPhone 14, and T-Mobile is planning to begin low-earth orbit (LEO) connectivity in 2023 through SpaceX, which recently filed an application with the US FCC to include direct-to-cellular capabilities in its Gen 2 Starlink satellites. Amazon is also set to launch its first batch of LEO satellites for Project Kuiper.

Most of these early projects will not provide high-speed broadband from space, and will instead offer low-bandwidth connectivity suitable for emergency calls and texts. All of this aims to service the currently underserved population around the world, which does not live within reach of traditional cell tower networks.

Commercialization of the moon begins in earnest

Despite the economic uncertainty, we believe new records will be established in spacetech as giant commercial projects get funded.

Extensive government and commercial efforts are underway to head “back to the Moon” decades after the Apollo program finished in 1972. This has been kicked off by NASA’s Artemis program, which saw the Artemis 1 mission’s Orion capsule returning to Earth after spending almost a month traveling around the Moon.

At almost the same time, the first fully-privately-funded lunar mission was launched by SpaceX for Japanese company iSpace, which is taking a fuel-efficient trip to the Moon and is due to get there in April. This would be the first fully commercial mission to land on the Moon, a milestone in the cooperation between Japan and the U.S. in space. Other commercial companies, such as Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic, are also targeting Moon landings.

With the first commercial companies headed moonward alongside national efforts, we expect 2023 to be a breakthrough year for the cislunar ecosystem.

Three drivers underpin revenue growth

Developments in the defense, cybersecurity and climate sectors will prove to be strong tailwinds for revenues in spacetech in 2023. Record growth in defense budgets driven by the war in Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions will drive business, and governments’ increasing desire for sovereign capability from space assets will lead to some huge orders in the sector. And, since cybersecurity is another tool in the geopolitical toolbox, satellite resilience against attacks is a priority.

A growing reliance on datasets generated in orbit means the security demands for the flow of data from the satellite to the cloud and ground stations are growing exponentially. We see 2023 as the year when the industry embraces quantum capabilities.

7 space tech predictions for 2023 by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

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Investor interest in SpaceX appears immune to Musk’s meddling

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter sent Tesla’s stock price on a roller coaster this year as its value correlated — largely negatively — with each development at the social media company. But SpaceX’s support from investors seems immune to the drama.

Back in April, when Musk first announced his intention to acquire Twitter, it was just weeks after Tesla stock hit its 2022 price peak, $381.82 on April 4, according to Yahoo Finance data. Since then, it has declined fairly consistently — other than the few bursts when it looked like the Twitter transaction might not go through after all or that Musk was stepping down as Twitter CEO — and opened today at $139.34 a share, a 63.5% haircut from this year’s high.

The chatter around Tesla stock has been getting louder lately, too, as Wall Street analysts wrote down the investment amid predictions that Musk will sell more Tesla shares to keep Twitter afloat, making them less confident it is a good buy.

But while all this drama continues to unfold, SpaceX, one of Musk’s other companies, not only seems shielded from the Twitter noise, but largely undeterred.

Investor interest in SpaceX appears immune to Musk’s meddling by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

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Astrix Astronautics’ Fia Jones on wooing Peter Beck to launch her startup

Fia Jones was 19 years old and studying physics at the University of Auckland in 2019 when she approached Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck at a party and told him she had an idea that would change the game for powering satellites. She’d be happy to tell him all about it … if he’d be willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

Cheeky, badass, naive – all words that come to mind when imagining this scenario, but it was Jones’ tenacity and confidence in the idea she and her co-founders – Max Daniels and William Hunter – came up with that enabled their startup, Astrix Astronautics, to take off.

The company, which develops power-efficient solar arrays for satellites, recently secured a spot on Rocket Lab’s Electron launch on May 2. Once in Earth’s orbit, Astrix’s cubesat, a teeny tiny satellite, unfurled into two inflatable solar arrays that measure around 10 square feet and can capture up to 200 watts of power.

In other words, Astrix has figured out how to use inflation to deploy a very large surface area from a compact volume, which allows for ease of access to power in isolated spaces.

This was the first time Astrix was really able to prove its concept, one that had industry experts skeptical due to the unpredictable nature of inflatable things in space. Astrix is gearing up to close a $5 million seed round, which will hopefully enable the company to scale further toward its mid-term goal of providing a low-cost power solution to newer satellite constellation companies that are trying to enter the market today.

“Power systems at the moment can cost more than what it costs to build the satellite itself,” Jones told TechCrunch. “Because we deploy such a large surface area, the biggest benefit for constellations is we’re able to switch to silicon cells rather than what everyone’s using, which is gallium arsenide cells, that are stupidly expensive. Like $2,000 to $3,000 per watt.”

“I didn’t happen to meet Peter Beck, and if I missed him at the ceremony, I would have continued to stalk him until I met him. I very intentionally went out to get his attention.” Fia Jones

We sat down with Jones to talk about how young founders can break into a legacy industry, the difference between pitching New Zealand and U.S. VCs, and how to deal with the limiting questions investors ask women versus the promotive questions they ask men.

The following interview, which has been edited for brevity and clarity, is part of an ongoing series that focuses on founders in the transportation sector.

Tell me about the time you approached Peter Beck with your startup idea.

At the University of Auckland, he was being awarded for being an adjunct professor. I was on holiday for a long weekend at the time, but one of my friends sent me Beck’s location, so I raced all the way there. The ceremony was over when I arrived, it was just a reception, so I snuck in and found him and was like, “I loved your speech.” And he was like, “Oh, I didn’t make a speech.” So then I was like, “Oh, sorry. So I love what you do, and I have this really cool business doing a new and innovative power system, but you have to sign an NDA. I promise it’s amazing.”

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How Rocket Lab questions the fundamentals of building both rockets and launch companies

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck has had an eventful couple of years, despite the unpredictable challenges that COVID-19 threw in the path of the rocket maker’s LA and New Zealand-based operations. Just this year, Rocket Lab had its public market debut, revealed its plans for a new medium-lift launch vehicle called Neutron and acquired two companies (on top of its first acquisition from 2020).

I spoke to Beck at our TC Sessions: Space 2021 event where we covered what’s new and special about Neutron, and how it leverages the pedigree of the company’s Electron rockets to challenge some assumptions about how bigger rockets are built. We also dove into his vision for Rocket Lab and what it aims to accomplish in terms of making it even easier for prospective customers to get their stuff to space.

Beck dished on everything from the unique way that Rocket Lab plans to land the reusable first stage of Neutron back on Earth, to the “Hungry Hippo”-type design of the fairing that allows it to avoid being discarded post-use. He also described his vision for what Rocket Lab hopes to become through its built-out of more service offerings, both through acquisitions and in-house product development.

Check out these excerpts, and then watch the full interview below.

On ditching landing legs and improving aerodynamics:

It’s all about removing as many components and as many complexities as possible [ … ] We had this epiphany one day, where we were like, we’re working on these landing legs, and we’re just going around in circles endlessly with mechanisms, and how are we going to service those mechanisms, and all the rest of it. And then we were like, let’s just stop, and let’s just not have landing legs. So let’s just have a wide enough base, so that we can resist any of the kind of tipping or creeping movements.

So we start off with this big wide base and drew a satellite in the payload and the upper stage top and the fairing diamond, and then just drew two lines that joined it all up, and it looked like a traffic cone. That’s actually the optimum vehicle: It has no legs, it’s just a nice stable kind of structure. And then as we started doing some of the CFD [computational fluid dynamics] on it, and some of the aerodynamics and some of the reentry work, and that traffic cone proved very useful, because you have this decreasing pressure over the length of the vehicle, which means you don’t have any shockwaves attaching to it, which is always a challenge with reentry.

On how to build a space company that actually serves the needs of modern customers:

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How to build a better rocket company

More private rocket companies are actually now coming online, after years of the field being left basically to SpaceX and Rocket Lab. At TC Sessions: Space 2021 this past week, we spoke to three rocket makers who have either already launched, achieved orbit or are well on their way: Firefly Aerospace’s Lauren Lyons, Astra’s Benjamin Lyon and Launcher’s Max Haot.

In our discussion, “New Kids on the Launch Block,” one common theme that quickly emerged was that vertical integration is a key driver of success in the rocket business is driving down costs, especially with smaller capacity launch vehicles. Just as, if not more important, is building a team that can execute with a focus on efficiency, iteration and flexibility.

Lyon:

I think space tech is all about rapidly iterating, as opposed to working for seven to 10 years on a single product, and having that bespoke application, because it means you have to know perfectly what the future is. And nobody buys an iPhone and then 10 years later says this is the best thing in the world, you want the latest thing. And so similarly, when you think about iterating, and doing space tech, both again, launch as well as on orbit, you really want this iterative approach that’s very focused on customers, as opposed to kind of the old school way of doing aerospace. I think that’s a key way to think about the future. Similarly, when we think about how we operate inside Astra, we think very hard about where can we get this down to basically a robot, where the robots doing the work [ … ] Now, obviously, there’s a path, there’s a roadmap to get there. But getting down to just a few people in mission control, and just a few people on the ground where we do the launch, that’s been something we’ve worked hard on, and recently just made it to orbit with. So I think that is a strategy that is really working and paying dividends.

Lyons: