Episode summary
Cowboy Space CEO Baiju Bhatt on building data centers in space
Summary
Cowboy Space is positioning itself as an orbital infrastructure company, starting with a first satellite launched earlier this month to test beaming solar power back to Earth using infrared lasers. Baiju Bhatt said the larger goal is to build power infrastructure in space and use it for workloads that are increasingly constrained on Earth, especially AI-related compute.
Bhatt argued that the company’s more ambitious bet is to build data centers in space and that the key constraint is launch capacity. Rather than relying on generic rockets, Cowboy Space wants to build a purpose-built launch vehicle so it can control the economics of putting compute in orbit. He said the company began working on the concept about a year and a half ago and sees orbital compute as a commercially viable market if costs can come down enough.
On timing and capital, Bhatt said Cowboy Space is targeting its first in-house rocket launch at the end of 2028 and expects the effort to require low single-digit billions of dollars to get the first rockets off the ground. He framed the plan as a long-term engineering challenge, with a larger ambition of scaling to 20,000 satellites in orbit.
Key takeaways
- Baiju Bhatt said Cowboy Space’s first satellite is intended to demonstrate transmission of power from space to Earth using infrared lasers.
- The company’s bigger thesis is that AI demand and space-based power infrastructure can support data centers in orbit.
- Bhatt said Cowboy Space wants to build its own launch vehicle because current launch capacity is not sufficient for the business it wants to build.
- He said the first in-house rocket launch is targeted for the end of 2028.
- Bhatt said getting the first rockets off the ground will require low single-digit billions of dollars, with a longer-term goal of 20,000 satellites in orbit.
Notable quotes
“WE HAVE OUR FIRST SATELLITE IN SPACE, WHICH IS GOING TO DO WHAT WE BELIEVE IS A TRULY UNIQUE THING, WHICH IS TRANSMIT POWER FROM SPACE TO EARTH USING INFRARED LASERS”
“THE IDEA OF DATA CENTERS IN SPACE, BY USING THAT POWER DIRECTLY IN ORBIT, WE CAN HARNESS THE ENERGY THERE MORE EFFICIENTLY”
“THERE'S THE EVER GROWING NEED FOR ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR AI”
“WE'RE TARGETING OUR FIRST LAUNCH OF OUR FIRST IN-HOUSE BUILT ROCKET AT THE END OF 2028”
How the episode opens
More than 2%. Those stocks under pressure in the premarket. Rocket lab leading the way lower after the company delayed its neutron rocket debut to 2027.
Orbital infrastructure startup Cowboy Space, launching its first satellite earlier this month with the goal of collecting solar energy and beaming it to earth. Joining us right now on the launch and the company's goal of building data centers in space is cowboy. Spacex founder and ceo bijou bhatt.
He's also the co-founder and former co-ceo of Robinhood and bijou. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Thanks for having me on. — All right. I thought Robinhood was pretty big, but spacex is quite a bit bigger. What got you to this point of saying goodbye to Robinhood and saying hello to spacex? This is something you've been chasing for a long time.
Yeah, believe it or not, it's it's been somewhat of a lifelong dream of mine. So I grew up around the space industry. My dad was a scientist, worked as a contractor as at nasa langley when I was a kid.
So I kind of had the idea of wanting to do spacex in the back of my mind, since I was a little little boy. And so I left about two and a half years ago, a little more than that, and excited to report that we have our first satellite in space, which is going to do what we believe is a truly unique thing, which is transmit power from space to earth using infrared lasers. So we launched that earlier this month on a rideshare or a little, little, little over in the last month rather.
And yeah, we're, we're eagerly, eagerly waiting to, to demonstrate what it can do. So more to come on that in the coming weeks and months.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- space data centers
- satellite launch
- startup strategy
- space infrastructure
- market implications
Companies and tickers mentioned
- HOOD
- Cowboy Space
- Robinhood
Watch the episode
Watch “Cowboy Space CEO Baiju Bhatt on building data centers in space” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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