We're building our own rocket program to build data centers in space. That's arguably the biggest economic opportunity in the history of the space industry.
That's been hard for you to make that big. I mean, I think the hard part is the fun part, right? Sure. If you want to do big stuff, a lot of the time the path to the right idea is just getting started with the idea that you think is the right one.
What is the biggest pain point for getting your operation to where you want it to be?
It's a very complicated business. One of my sort of algorithms for this is asking questions.
All right, welcome to a new episode of Power Players. I'm psyched to bring back this guest. We haven't talked in a little bit, but he's got a lot going on. Baiju Bhatt, Cowboy Space Corporation, founder and CEO. Baiju, last time I talked to you was called a different company, man.
It was Aether Flux, right?
A lot of stuff has happened, man. A lot of stuff has happened. Yeah, so should catch you up a little bit on what's going on.
So we had a big announcement a couple of months ago. Three things. First one, we renamed the company Cowboy Space Corporation. The artist formerly known as Aether Flux. And yeah, actually really stoked about that name change. It's like, I mean, as you know, I tend to like the counterculture a little bit. So there's a little bit of that. There's a little bit of Americana. And also, I mean, the second part of this is that we're building our own rocket program to build data centers in space. And so, we're kind of forging our own path to space, which is I think also very cowboy. So, that's the second thing. And the third thing is that we raised $275 million for all this development work. So, company is giddy up and ready to go.
It's great. Hey, so compared to what you were doing, Aether Flux, how is this company different?
Yeah, it's actually an evolution of a lot of the core technologies. So, I started left Robin Hood a little over two years ago now to work on space full-time and the thesis in the beginning was and kind of still is around energy in space and what is the energy infrastructure of space look like and building a native energy company in space. The company started out with the idea of space solar power, which is an old idea from the 1970s and specifically around collecting power in space and beaming it to places where there's no existing power grid. So, we're actually going to be doing that later on this year. So, we have our first satellite going to space that's going to do space solar power, which we're very excited about. And that's going to collect power in space and beam it down to locations and, you know, likely in places like White Sands, New Mexico. And we're going to be able to convert that into electrical power. To do that, we ended up building a pretty significant amount of technology around the optics and laser power management side and the ability to be able to point a laser from space down to Earth.
The second mission we have going to space is actually going to use that technology for data transmission. And this is kind of the transition from you focusing primarily on space-based solar power and power beaming to the other application for energy in space which is using it to power data centers. And so we've got a lot of work that we're doing in that regard. And the goal for that is to actually launch our very first megawatt class data center which is the entire upper stage of a rocket and that's targeting at the end of 2028. So a lot of stuff that goes into that including building a whole rocket.
How do you build a whole rocket?
You start with the engines.
That like these are major challenges you're trying to overcome.
Like what drives you to do this?
You know me at this point. I like to build stuff.
I mean I've had a passion for space since childhood. Sure. And the kind of realization with this is realizing if we want to build a scale data centers in space which we think is arguably the biggest economic opportunity in the history of the space industry. The availability of launch capacity and the ride to space is a major limiting factor. And while companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are building huge rockets and making good progress on that, we want to forge our own path there. And we think that's really critical both for controlling the economics of what we build but also integral to the design of what we're building. And should I tell you a little bit more about?
Yeah, please. I'm really this is the year of space. I'm fascinated whatever you're going to tell me.
Okay. Love it. Yeah, so data centers in space. What exactly? I don't even know what it means. What does that even mean? Right. What that means is that these are satellites, spacecraft that are in low Earth orbit that are collecting power from the sun, using it directly on the spacecraft to do compute and then using different methods of transmitting the results back and forth from Earth or to other places in space. And when you kind of look at that application of data centers in space, couple things come up. Number one is that when you think about say two racks of GPUs and if you had one rack of GPUs here and one rack of GPUs in the building across the street, strictly worse than having them in the same building. And so if that's the case and you apply this analogy to outer space, you actually want to think about a monolithic architecture where if you have a certain amount of mass orbit, really concentrating that down to the smallest number of individual spacecraft so you get the most interconnectivity between GPUs.
Number one and number two realizing that on the way to putting a satellite in space, you end up lifting the upper stage of the rocket right there. Right? And realizing that we can use the mass and volume of the upper stage of the rocket as an integral part of the data center because again the point from a second ago is that you want to think about the architecture of this very differently than for example a communications constellation where you want to go with large monolithic spacecraft. Well, why not have the backbone of this large monolithic spacecraft be the rocket itself? And when you do that, you free up a lot of space in the actual rocket itself for the compute and the power generation and you can actually use the shell of the rocket as a cooling mechanism for the whole thing. So if you go to our website, cowboyace.com, you can see the video that we made about this. So actually the fairing of the rocket, the shell of it when it gets to orbit unfolds and becomes a big radiator.
Which is pretty novel. And we think that this is one of the unique approaches to building data centers in space that actually unlocks what we think are going to be very low-cost economics for doing this.
How we are watching the AI boom here on planet earth. How important is it to build data centers in space to support what we are doing here on mother earth?
I think it's, I mean I personally think it's critical. And I think we're already starting to see the effects of using so much of our terrestrial energy grid for data centers, right? And you see this movement of not my backyard, etc., etc.
Nimbies, not in my backyard. That one of the property brothers gave me that one. I didn't know what they meant. I got after Nimbies.
Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Um, yeah. And I think as we look specifically around the United States, our energy infrastructure on this planet, I'd like to see it used for people and let's build a big power grid in space and use that for AI. And I think the appeal of this is also that once this gets up and running, the prospect of bringing new chipsets online actually transitions from, hey, let's go get a land lease and work with the local power plant and work with local communities and do all this stuff, which has a pretty long delay time, saying, let's take those chipsets and integrate them into a spacecraft and get it to the launchpad. And we think that we can do that in a matter of weeks whereas the process right now is pushing five to seven years in a lot of cases.
Terrible. So do you work, do you work with SpaceX? Are you trying to build another SpaceX? How are you guys different?
So yeah, so we do work with SpaceX on the launch of our first two satellites to space. So we're using a ride share program to do it. But long-term we're actually going to build our own launch vehicle. So, we're going to have our own rockets, our own launchpad, and our own rocket.
Just like we see over at SpaceX with Elon, those the rockets that go up and they come back and they land in the middle of the water.
Um, yeah, we're going to try to catch them and land them back on launch pads.
I said this to you last time I talked to you, like I just think of back to everything you and Vlad built in Robin Hood. Now, to sit here and talk about rockets with you is just a lot for me to take in. I got to be honest with you.
It is. Like, it's just has it been hard for you to make that pivot?
I mean I think the hard part is the fun part, right? Sure. Like it's the whole point of this is to challenge myself and do something different. I mean there's an alternative reality where after Robin Hood I'm building like an enterprise SaaS company.
Nobody wants to do that fest.
Yeah. You wouldn't get be able to get me out of bed for that one. Yeah. No, I mean I'd had a love of doing this my whole life. And I remember way before I had even a breadcrumb of success. I'm like if you ever hit a big at the space thing,
Start ever had big at this finance thing, start a space company.
What was that conversation with Vlad saying, hey dude, I'm going to go do the space thing?
I mean, I think he's heard me talk about it a lot over the years.
I remember, and this is like going back like over 10 years when we lived in New York. We would, you know, be doing market stuff all day and then stay up coding all night, in our little, you know, sweaty little two-bedroom apartment which was also where a bunch of our friends lived. And in the wee hours of the night being like, you know, it'd be really cool if we could mine helium-3 on the moon. It was like kind of that moment in the evening where you're just like, you need to go to bed, but instead you're just like thinking about science and weird stuff. It's like, yeah, what if we did?
Does he want, did he want to go into space or like, or he's just cool at Robin Hood?
I mean Vlad's got a lot of stuff going on. I'm not sure if he wants to go to space. But he's working on math stuff. So, yeah, he's got a lot of ideas.
No shortage of ideas on that one. At this point like what is the biggest pain point for getting your operation to where you want it to be? Is it government? Is it design? Can't get enough chips? Is it all three of them and probably 40 more I'm not even thinking of?
I mean, I think it's a very complicated business and it's getting all the different pieces moving in unison because we're trying to build and launch a rocket by the end of 2028 and we didn't start all that long ago. I mean, this will be very very fast development by any standard of doing this. And one of my sort of algorithms for this is asking the question, what is the thing I could do today that derisks that timeline the most? And what are the things that if I don't do in short order are going to really challenge that timeline and working backwards from there. And so as different as it is from building a consumer finance product, still building a company.
Sure. So, you still have to hire people, get people working really hard, get people motivated about the mission of the company, and, you know, make sure that I'm kind of running ahead of what the roadblocks are and trying to unblock them.
Is it hard to find talent to do what you're trying to do?
We've actually had, well, first things, where's the camera? We are recruiting. We're hiring. So, if you're looking to work in the space industry, you know about this stuff. The company's got a great name, too.
Yeah. And the swag is good.
Swag is good. Is it hard hiring people?
