Space Race 2.0: The Strategic Investment Opportunity of the Decade

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  Speaker 1:

  What if you could invest early in the same technologies that will establish America’s leadership in space for the next century, and you didn’t need insider aerospace connections or millions of dollars in capital to back these strategically vital space startups?

  You’ll learn today how a new space race is creating unprecedented opportunities across defense, telecommunications, biotech, and critical infrastructure. Alumni Ventures has made investing in this trillion-dollar frontier accessible starting at just $10,000, giving you ownership in companies that are quite literally reaching for the stars.

  Investing in Space 2.0 isn’t just about potential financial returns. It’s about strengthening America’s position in critical technologies while being a part of humanity’s next great leap forward—one that parallels historic wealth creation opportunities like railroads in the 1800s or the internet in the 1990s.

  Now as we get started, I must pause and remind everyone we’re speaking today about Alumni Ventures and our views of the associated investing landscape. This presentation is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer to buy or sell securities, which are only made pursuant to the formal offering documents for the fund.

  Hello, I am Drew Wandzilak. I am a senior associate here at Alumni Ventures. I’ve been with the firm for about eight years now, a full-time investor for about six of those. Grew up in North Carolina. I’m now based here in our Chicago office, and I am a part of a lot of our strategic technology initiatives—so things that are pushing critical technologies and national security forward.

  Included in that is a lot of our space investing, and we’ll talk a little bit more about our experience here throughout the presentation. Alumni Ventures has been known and recognized as a top 10 aerospace and defense investor. So this is an area that we have experience in, and this is an area that we’ve been highly active in.

  Just to give you a little background on Alumni Ventures—we were founded in 2014 with this explicit goal to offer individuals the opportunity to own smart, simple venture capital portfolios. We’ve introduced over 10,000 investors to venture capital for the first time, offering this well-diversified portfolio with a low minimum investment. We’ve raised over $1.4 billion from those 10,000 individual investors and have invested in over 1,500 portfolio companies, making us one of the most active venture firms globally and the largest domestic venture firm for individuals.

  Some of our accomplishments here—again, where are we coming from to give a presentation and start a conversation like this? We’re a leading venture firm for individuals. We’re one of the largest and most engaged communities in entrepreneurship. And we have a large investing team behind everything that we do.

  Part of our model is co-investing alongside experienced venture firms and sector experts. We sit exclusively as a co-investor, and so we build relationships with some of the brand-name venture firms you’ve heard of and that you see on the screen here: Kleiner Perkins, Khosla, NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia. So we are following them into opportunities in many different domains, and we will talk about a few of them today that are in and related to the space economy.

  So if history has taught us anything, it’s that the biggest opportunities lie right at the edge of what seems possible. And the companies that are shaping Space Race 2.0, as we’re calling it—they’re not just building businesses, they’re truly building what we will see as history.

  Take Varda Space, a portfolio company, for example, pioneering in-space manufacturing. Why is that important? Because the physics of microgravity unlock high-value materials. Think pharmaceuticals, think fiber optics—things that have different properties, different relationships. They act in different ways in these microgravity environments than they do here on Earth. So stuff that may seem like sci-fi isn’t—it’s supply chain at the orbital level.

  Or think of Axiom Space, which is constructing the first commercial space station. This is going to be a permanent foothold for humanity in low Earth orbit—research, tourism, and even manufacturing like Varda. Axiom is truly planting the seed for an off-world economy.

  But as we go through this presentation, I hope what you pull from it is that investing in space isn’t just about backing cool technology—and it is usually pretty cool technology—it’s about enabling this future that we all want to live in.

  So why now? What is driving this Space Race 2.0—or even just Space 2.0?

  The biggest barrier to space traditionally has been cost. Getting mass into orbit has traditionally been very expensive, and right now we are obliterating those costs, largely thanks to reusability. That’s been a primary innovation of SpaceX. We have slashed launch costs by over 90%. The cost per kilogram in the Space Shuttle era to get something to low Earth orbit was $55,000 per kilogram. Today—under $2,000. And with the advancement of Starship, we think that number will go down to even below $1,500 per kilogram.

  So it costs us a lot less, and it’s much easier to get any mass or payload into these orbits, and that has totally transformed how the industry operates. You add in autonomous navigation, miniaturizing satellites that are 80% lighter, you’re pulling in next-gen manufacturing capabilities or even 3D-printing entire spacecraft—suddenly the economics of the entire industry really make sense for more than just government applications.

  And so we are at this inflection point—and maybe for the first time—space is truly open for business.

  Just to highlight this point a little bit more: this is, in our view, a technological revolution as profound as perhaps the railroads or the internet. These are moments in history when technology changes everything—it completely redefines how markets operate. The railroad unlocked the American West, birthing the next generation of industrial titans. The internet transformed how we live, work, and communicate. Space is potentially that next frontier.

  And the first movers in these new technological revolutions don’t just profit—they actually define what that future looks like. Early internet investors saw 10x higher returns than those that waited, and that same pattern is unfolding here in space—only this time, it’s happening above our heads.

  So let’s just put a few more numbers here behind this. This is an industry now—because of that massive drop in launch costs, because of both private and public investment (that we’ll dive into in a little bit)—that is projected to be about a $1 trillion industry by 2040.

  There are new players here—it’s telecom, it’s defense, it’s biotech, it’s critical infrastructure. Industries that already make up a lot of the foundation of modern civilization here on Earth that are either seeing benefits or massive step functions in efficiency or innovation that they can achieve when they do this orbitally or in deep space.

  The market. This is important and something that we’ve been alluding to over the last few slides. I just want to again put in perspective where we are—and if I recorded this a month later, it would be very different numbers. This is how much activity is happening in this market.

  There are about 28,000 active satellites currently in orbit. That is three times more than there were in 2017. So in less than a decade, we have tripled the number of objects that we have put up into space.

  Over $20 billion in private capital has been deployed into space startups every single year. And it’s not just private capital—it’s still those same government agencies and government programs that continue to get involved.

  NASA’s $28 billion Artemis program is proof that nations are also betting on deep space exploration. We are truly witnessing this space investment supercycle, and those that recognize that trend—we feel—will be a part of building that backbone for this next trillion-dollar economy.

  So why does this matter beyond the potential financial returns or financial opportunity?

  It’s because—with the cost of getting to space going down and more opportunities opening up—space is no longer a luxury or a research-based environment. It is becoming truly a strategic necessity.

  GPS, global communications, military applications—our entire technological infrastructure, for the most part, already depends on space-based assets. Think about how tied in GPS is to our everyday lives.

  And China and Russia and other adversaries are aggressively expanding their orbital presence. They’re putting more and more satellites into orbit. They’re thinking about what potential capabilities they could have in this new domain. And so the United States must continue to secure our dominance and protect ourselves against potential future threats.

  And so governments—not late to the party here—they are continuing to understand what their role is and what the national security imperative is. But what they’re starting to figure out is the role that partnership with investors can play. As this becomes more than just exploration—and there are financial opportunities, there is economic stability on the line, there is national security on the line, and there is global leadership on the line—we need partnership and collaboration between these governments and between private investors.

  I know when I talk about space, it’s easy to think, wow, this is a very broad market and there’s a lot that could potentially happen here. And that’s good—I hope you’re feeling that energy come through.

  But I just wanted to provide some examples. When we talk about these areas as a national security imperative, when we talk about space dominance, when we say Space Race 2.0, what do we mean? What are some examples of this?

  Well, you have satellite mega constellations—think Starlink, right? Where these companies or organizations are building constellations of satellites to create more connectivity, reliability, and have a truly kind of networked approach.

  We’re thinking about GPS. I touched on this in the last slide, but this is becoming critically important for many things that happen in our everyday lives. So how do we build resiliency in those systems? How do we build redundancy? How do we modernize how GPS operates today?

  You have missile detection satellites—so maybe more squarely in how we think about defense and military applications. But with the rise of hypersonic threats and missile systems—recently we’ve heard the current administration talk about an “Iron Dome” for the U.S.—space and space-based assets will be a massive part of those objectives.

  And then we have one that maybe has been seen as a little bit sci-fi up until recently—but actually thinking about the moon and lunar resources as strategic. The moon being this kind of lunar gateway station that is extending American influence beyond Earth, but also as a crucial piece of further deep space exploration and even mining and resource exploitation.

  And then finally—this is something that maybe has been a little bit tongue-in-cheek over the past few decades here—but space debris tracking. We’re putting more stuff into space, and the things that we put into space don’t last forever.

  We occasionally have to move or de-orbit or decommission assets. We’ve seen conversations around the decommissioning of the ISS. And even just the natural activities of space-based objects create debris. And the environment of space—and in orbit—is much different than the environment here on Earth. The speed that these objects and this debris are moving at can create serious problems and create serious damage to other assets.

  So as we put more up into space, this is becoming a greater concern. And whether this is literally space debris/trash removal, or—at the very least—understanding and being able to respond to situations where debris could have an impact on existing assets.

   

  I’m going to continue to reiterate the national security imperative here. I truly believe that the battlefield of the future is happening above us. The U.S. military is moving fast to secure space-based defense systems. Case in point: one of our portfolio companies, Hawkeye 360—their RF intelligence satellites track GPS jamming and radar activity, which, as you can imagine by the nature of those things, is critical in modern warfare. They control about 80% of the commercial RF sensing market and already have DOD contracts in place. And I will say it time and time again that space-based intelligence is not just a priority for the DOD—it is becoming a larger and larger imperative.

  We touched on the moon. This space race will not just include assets and activities in orbit. It will include lunar dominance and the relationship with the moon, because it is essential for future logistics. It is essential for deep space exploration, resource extraction. And so a great example to showcase: Impulse Space, which is a company that was founded by employee number one at SpaceX, Tom Mueller. They’re doing in-space logistics and transportation—so making it cheaper and faster to move your satellite or your payload within an orbit or between orbits.

  And so we use this analog of the railroads. This is a great example of laying down the tracks that will open up entirely new markets. And so when we think about getting to the moon and building a superhighway of sorts to get potentially people—but at least payloads and cargo—between these two areas, we’re going to need repeatable, cheap, efficient, and fast forms of transportation. And so Impulse is doing that. We co-invested alongside Founders Fund and Lux Capital, and they’re actually working closely with NASA and the DOD on a number of capabilities, including those for future lunar bases. History repeats itself—I don’t know what to say. It’s just like those first nations that controlled the seas dominated global trade. The first that establishes these lunar supply chains will shape that next century of space opportunity.

  I alluded to this right at the beginning: microgravity, biotech, medical research, healthcare. What if I told you that the next revolution in biotech and pharmaceuticals isn’t going to happen in a lab here on Earth—but in orbit? It’s because microgravity is this really unique R&D accelerator. Varda Space, a company I highlighted earlier, has already returned space-grown pharmaceutical materials from orbit. They have partnerships with three major pharmaceutical companies. And we’re seeing in-space manufacturing unlocking potentially new drugs, changing how we think about tissue engineering, organ regeneration. The environment is so unique and so different that we can explore new opportunities in science research. And again, a reminder: this is not moonshot sci-fi, “I watched too much Star Trek last night.” This is stuff that is happening today.

  And then I want to touch on the commercialization of space and remind that private industry isn’t just a participant here, thinking about ways that they can insert themselves into these new markets—but it’s private industry that’s actually leading these markets. And I think that’s perhaps one of the biggest signals when we think about the space of yesterday and the space of tomorrow: where the imperative, where the capital, and where the focus is coming from. And this has moved from a domain of government-backed science and exploration to one of private industry-led economic opportunity.

  So what are some areas that we’re seeing that maybe have really strong economic opportunity in the near term and in the long term?

  Starting in the long term, we’ve looked at opportunities in asteroid mining. And this is a great example of—in the early 2000s this was attempted, but the cost of getting these things into deep space was so expensive that you would need so much capital to get this done that it didn’t make much sense.

  But now that it’s easier to get things into space—and then with the efforts of companies like Impulse moving stuff around in space—the economics become a little bit more compelling. Can we go out and get these rare minerals and rare materials that are abundant on asteroids, potentially abundant on asteroids, and bring them back here to Earth? What is the value of that?

  We think about, maybe more in the near term, in-orbit satellite servicing. Most satellites are operating for about five years. And so do we refuel those? Do we service those? Do we decommission those? Are we repositioning them?

  Thinking about national security and defense applications—if you have a communications satellite and you need to respond to a blip in the network, you might need to move that satellite. And so there’s becoming a tremendous opportunity in the servicing of satellites in orbit.

  And then finally, what I’m going to say: space tourism. This has seemed like this crazy, sci-fi world of “I’m going to go spend a week in space.” But as it becomes cheaper and safer to move things around, we cannot ignore the potential and the demand for space-based tourism. Whether that’s you’re kind of scraping up into near space very quickly, or you’re spending prolonged periods of time in orbit or even on other terrestrial bodies like the moon.

  This is the big question—and the question that we ask of pretty much every company that we talk to: why now? Right? What about this moment in time has led to just the excitement that I hope you’ve seen I’ve had about this opportunity?

  And it’s truly because this is a trillion-dollar industry that is unfolding before our very eyes. And we’ve seen a lot of great developments over the last few decades, but we are still in the early stages. And this is an industry that is going to support critical infrastructure, defense, biotech breakthroughs, tourism, communications—you name it. The massive industries here on Earth will be changed for the better, or at least impacted, by what we are able to do in the space economy.

  And like I said, this is still in the early stage. The upside here is still massive. It’s becoming a strategic imperative—as I’ve carried through the presentation.

  And what that means is there’s some really powerful tailwinds outside of the private capital markets. From the government side, we think about space as a strategic asset now. It is not a nice-to-have. It is not “there are potentially good businesses here.” It’s—we need to have a presence in space for defense purposes, for communications purposes, manufacturing purposes.

  And so the people that are around the table now and are backing these companies have a really unique advantage to be a part of that. The sky is no longer the limit here—it is the launchpad for what’s to come.

  So I’ll kind of leave the meat of the presentation here with: the real question isn’t “why invest in space?” The real question is “can you afford to miss it?”

  So if the things I talked about today have you interested in backing opportunities in the space economy, in the national security domain, and other technological imperatives—both from a business perspective or from a national interest perspective—we’d like to be your venture partner in that.

  If you’re ready to learn more about how we operate, I guide you to either schedule a call with one of our senior partners or just check out materials on our fund. Like I mentioned, I support our U.S. technology funds. So we are focusing on all things national security-related, critical technologies. And one of our key pillars for the fund is space innovation because we truly believe there is a lot of potential, power, and opportunity in the final frontier.

  I wanted to say thank you, everyone, for spending your time listening. I really enjoyed it. And if you want to talk space—or any of the things that we touched on today, or adjacent opportunities or technologies—please reach out. We’d love to hear from you, and we’d love to be your partner.