Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - The Million Satellite Race: SpaceX, AI, and the Orbital Data Center Revolution

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Anpanman - The Million Satellite Race: SpaceX, AI, and the Orbital Data Center Revolution · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This. Is the AST Space mobile podcast.
• 0:11
  Just basically from the phone being seamless, regardless of
• 0:14
  where you are, we don't want the user even to know that it's
• 0:17
  connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we
• 0:22
  have is very, very, very large. Everyone, thanks for joining.
• 0:29
  A very cold day in the US here. I'm in New York City and it's
• 0:33
  absolutely freezing. But yeah, I wanted to have a
• 0:37
  space and talk about. This.
• 0:40
  Explosion of information that's come out and excitement
• 0:45
  obviously Yesterday SpaceX filed with the FCC for a potential
• 0:51
  constellation of 1,000,000 satellites to do data center
• 0:57
  applications. These are, this is something
• 1:00
  that I guess starting back in the fourth quarter of last year
• 1:04
  started to really pick up steam and interest around it has
• 1:08
  continued to grow. But now we're seeing formality,
• 1:12
  A formality which is SpaceX now applying for consolation.
• 1:16
  1,000,000 is a very big number, often times I think for those
• 1:21
  who are not familiar with space. You go out.
• 1:24
  To regulators and ask for more than you think you need.
• 1:27
  Obviously you don't want to be, you know, ridiculous, but you
• 1:32
  you go for a big number and it looks like Musk went for a
• 1:36
  massive number. I think for those that follow
• 1:39
  the industry closely, the Chinese recently disclosed
• 1:43
  internationally. That they are.
• 1:45
  Looking to build constellations in the I think it was like
• 1:49
  several 100,000 satellites to compete with Starlink and ASD
• 1:53
  Space Mobile. And so I guess Musk decided to
• 1:57
  even go bigger. And then of course, when he
• 1:59
  tweeted how much we did Doctor Evil saying 1,000,000, why not 1
• 2:04
  billion or or 1,000,000? And then he tweeted, well,
• 2:07
  actually I meant 1 billion. Is a joke.
• 2:09
  But but yeah, the the filing yesterday I think.
• 2:14
  Is a watershed moment. Because now you've got the most,
• 2:20
  you know, the the most visible company and arguably the most
• 2:24
  successful, at least over the last several decades and
• 2:28
  probably for the foreseeable future.
• 2:30
  What can you be the most successful space company filing
• 2:35
  and making it formal that they are planning to get into the
• 2:40
  what we're calling AI data centers in space market.
• 2:43
  And so as I was walking this morning to get a haircut in
• 2:48
  freezing weather, I was thinking about what the tweets that came
• 2:55
  out from mosque meant. And, and obviously it's caused a
• 2:57
  huge stir. And of course, there's like all
• 3:00
  this other, other noise out there.
• 3:03
  And maybe it's part of, I guess a, a move for a distraction.
• 3:07
  But in actuality, I, I do think this move to, to, to file with
• 3:13
  the FCC for this new consolation is a big watershed event for
• 3:19
  space industry. And so, you know, we basically
• 3:22
  are, we have front row seats to seeing a multi billion dollar
• 3:26
  market being born. It's not as if SpaceX was first
• 3:31
  to do this. Obviously there's players like
• 3:32
  star cloud and other start-ups that have been contemplating
• 3:35
  this. And this is a concept that's
• 3:36
  been out there for quite some time.
• 3:38
  But as we know, when Musk flashes into an industry, it
• 3:43
  creates waves and draws interest and.
• 3:47
  In some respects validates it right and so.
• 3:50
  I saw that first hand with AST space Mobile back in 2017 when
• 3:57
  when a bell came out with his vision for connecting unmodified
• 4:02
  mobile phones or any 3 GPP device to satellite space.
• 4:08
  That was viewed as a pipe dream and kind of crazy.
• 4:12
  And, and over the years, you know, he iterated and sent up
• 4:16
  Blue Walker one and then of course Blue Walker 3.
• 4:20
  And on the cusp of of that launch of Blue Walker 3, which
• 4:24
  is the true, you know, prototype of what is now Block 1 and now
• 4:29
  Block 2 satellites on the. Eve of that.
• 4:32
  That's when Elon Musk came out and said, hey, we're doing
• 4:35
  direct to sell and this is going to be a massive market.
• 4:39
  And I mean, he kind of hit, I guess made proclamations that
• 4:45
  they had created the technology when in fact they were, they had
• 4:48
  not. And what SpaceX was putting up,
• 4:52
  you know, Starlink was, was a imperfect solution, minimally
• 4:58
  very viable product, but nonetheless.
• 5:01
  It it drew interest into the sector, right.
• 5:03
  And so when people. Saw that they're like wow this
• 5:05
  must be pretty big and it immediately shut down the
• 5:08
  naysayers I mean the naysayers today even say that that
• 5:11
  market's going to be small or it's not going to be
• 5:13
  economically attractive but yet I mean just.
• 5:17
  You know, like the writing's on the wall, like.
• 5:20
  SpaceX bought, you know, Echostar Spectrum to be used for
• 5:26
  direct to sell just for US, and they spent over $20 billion on
• 5:31
  the spectrum. And so for any naysayers saying
• 5:33
  that the market's going to be small, you don't do that, right?
• 5:37
  And of course, AST Space Mobile purchased Legato Spectrum.
• 5:41
  And so I think the point I'm trying to make is that SpaceX
• 5:45
  and Musk in general, they, they help validate markets, right?
• 5:49
  And so the, for example, Star Cloud, the CEO has been pretty
• 5:53
  active in talking about data centers in space.
• 5:56
  And he's, he probably had folks kind of laughing at him.
• 6:00
  But now, now because SpaceX has pretty much, you know, they're
• 6:07
  the, the whole point of their IPO is to make this thing
• 6:10
  happen, right? And.
• 6:12
  We know that. Starlink is the biggest driver
• 6:13
  of value at SpaceX. However, this IPO to go public
• 6:17
  and you know, have all that scrutiny and the pressure of
• 6:22
  performing as a public company, the whole point is to raise
• 6:25
  money to go after this big opportunity.
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  And so for Star Cloud, when you look at.
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  And by the way. Like I I know a little bit about
• 6:32
  the company and I've looked at the architecture, which I think
• 6:35
  is pretty. Insane.
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  If you look at what they're proposing in terms of their,
• 6:42
  their satellite or their solar array and and the architecture,
• 6:47
  it looks like a big, big target that would get hit and by
• 6:51
  debris. But, but you know, I won't go
• 6:53
  into details there, but for start cloud, this is great for
• 6:58
  SpaceX to get into this business because now start, start, start
• 7:01
  cloud, if they were having a hard time raising money, now
• 7:04
  they can and there's going to be a lot of interest because.
• 7:06
  I think the thing that. People fail to recognize is that
• 7:11
  SpaceX is, you know, what their merger potentially with XAI
• 7:17
  with, with Tesla that's becoming a vertically integrated player
• 7:22
  of. All kinds of stuff, right?
• 7:24
  And so. Tesla is more than just cars,
• 7:27
  it's robots. It's you know, they're going to
• 7:31
  start building out more solar capacity and then of course
• 7:37
  you've got launch, you've got you've got communication
• 7:40
  satellites and and service, you're going to have data
• 7:44
  centers and then you have applications and AI like of
• 7:47
  course X and then you've got XAI.
• 7:50
  And so the idea that, and we, we saw this with the solar names on
• 7:56
  Friday when Tesla said, Hey, we're going to build 100
• 8:00
  gigawatts of production capacities for, for solar
• 8:04
  panels, you know, modules and cells.
• 8:06
  A bunch of solar names sold off because some Southside research
• 8:09
  channels were like, well, you know, what if Tesla decides to
• 8:12
  sell some of that externally to the market?
• 8:15
  And if I guess they didn't read the transcript closely that, you
• 8:19
  know, Tesla slash Musk, his entire empire.
• 8:23
  They're they're planning to utilize every single GW of
• 8:26
  production into their own data centers and their own
• 8:30
  applications. And so it's just for internal
• 8:32
  consumption. And what people?
• 8:35
  Forget is that solar is going to be E driver of generating
• 8:42
  electricity. And so we are not even close to
• 8:47
  having enough capacity to meet that demand.
• 8:50
  And China is like, I think they, they're, you know, they're head
• 8:54
  and shoulders above US in terms of its solid capacity and
• 8:57
  production. And you know, companies like T1
• 9:00
  Energy, you know, it, there's a big opportunity for them.
• 9:03
  They're, they're going to be at 5 modules and, and solar cells.
• 9:09
  But then beyond that, you know, people will eventually start
• 9:12
  pricing in the fact that these guys are going to have to build
• 9:14
  out even more capacity. Because.
• 9:17
  The fact that you're building enough capacity to generate 5
• 9:20
  nuclear plants worth of of power, that's not enough.
• 9:23
  And this idea that? You know the.
• 9:27
  The grid infrastructure is not strong enough and you're going
• 9:30
  to have to put solar production or sorry, power production right
• 9:34
  next to data centers. I think that's going to be a an
• 9:38
  increasingly an increasing way of, of where these, you know,
• 9:45
  whether it's natural gas or solar or nuclear, like you're
• 9:47
  going to have to put those right next to the data centers because
• 9:50
  there's no way to connect all this stuff.
• 9:53
  But anyway, but yeah, going back to what this news means, I mean,
• 9:59
  as I said before, Musk. He he has this, this ability.
• 10:04
  Yeah, he might miss deadlines and things like that, but he's a
• 10:06
  visionary. He he's he's actually very good
• 10:09
  at seeing where the puck is going.
• 10:11
  And if you think about, you know, SpaceX, you know what
• 10:15
  they've done, they created, they created, you know, reusable
• 10:20
  rockets, which people poo pooed. They thought it was impossible,
• 10:22
  but it happened. And then based off of that, when
• 10:27
  he was doing work for one web, he's like, oh, I should get into
• 10:30
  this, this fixed wireless business and but do it better,
• 10:34
  right? I'm going to do it in Leo and
• 10:36
  I'm going to offer the latency and high speeds.
• 10:40
  And so, you know, he saw a customer doing it and then he he
• 10:45
  did it, he replicated it, right? And so and that.
• 10:48
  Holds true with AST space. Mobile is like, oh these what
• 10:51
  these guys are doing is interesting.
• 10:52
  I'm going to try to do something similar.
• 10:54
  And in that case. You know, I'd argue that they
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  they fell short in terms of technology, but they'll
• 11:00
  eventually get there and they'll be a good, you know, competitor
• 11:04
  in what should be a duopoly. But, and this goes back to even
• 11:09
  electric vehicles, right? Like Musk acquired Tesla and
• 11:13
  took it to the next level when people were Pooh poohing
• 11:17
  electric vehicles, right? Like, oh, this isn't viable.
• 11:20
  They have all these drawbacks and but, but you know, he made
• 11:25
  that a reality. And so I think it's important
• 11:28
  for people to take a step back because if and.
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  And just think about the. The bigger picture, right?
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  Because. The thing about a a data centers
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  is, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a ton of things to work
• 11:40
  out and. Is it going to be, you know?
• 11:43
  Is it something that you can count on this year?
• 11:45
  No. Is it going to be next year?
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  Is it going to be year after? No, I mean there's going to be
• 11:48
  test satellites going up and people are going to be figuring
• 11:51
  things out and even small companies like I in one of the
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  in my tweet today, I I talked about the power bank, which is
• 12:00
  ticker SUUN. They, you know, they're, they
• 12:05
  are providing the solar thermal and power management system for
• 12:09
  this one test satellite, which is planning to do distributed
• 12:12
  compute up in space. This can be orbit AI, but
• 12:17
  there's going to be a lot of players, right?
• 12:19
  And, but I think the most important thing is that the fact
• 12:23
  that SpaceX is serious about this and they're putting dollars
• 12:26
  towards it, it's it's going to happen.
• 12:30
  And is it going to happen in two years or is it going to happen
• 12:33
  in five years? I mean, I can't tell you that.
• 12:34
  And most likely, if SpaceX is saying it's going to happen in
• 12:36
  three years, it's probably going to happen in five to six years,
• 12:39
  right? It's going to take twice the
• 12:40
  time. But this market's going to be
• 12:44
  huge. And the reason why it's
• 12:45
  important for space is that space previously was somewhat of
• 12:52
  a small market or not small, but there were only a handful of
• 12:56
  areas where you could really make money, right?
• 12:58
  And So what I mean by that is earth observation, you know,
• 13:03
  that's what like planet labs and black sky and I guess the
• 13:08
  smaller players out logic and and others that that market was
• 13:12
  interesting and people talked about like, oh, there's there's
• 13:15
  a lot of cool applications like doing.
• 13:17
  City. Planning or obviously you know,
• 13:21
  checking out changing environments.
• 13:24
  A whole host. Of different applications, but
• 13:26
  that market today I think is about 5 billion in size, right,
• 13:30
  And so going to 2033. You know that could.
• 13:34
  At least I'm I'm by the way, this is like ChatGPT stuff.
• 13:36
  So, but by 2033, that market's expected to get to 8 billion in
• 13:41
  size. And so that's it's.
• 13:42
  Big, but it's not that big. Whereas like ASD space mobile
• 13:47
  plays in the communications market for satellites.
• 13:50
  And so there you're looking at a a market that's about 8. 108
• 13:54
  billion in 2024 and you know that that's going to grow pretty
• 14:00
  significantly over the next several years I think.
• 14:02
  Let me see. Did ChatGPT give me anything
• 14:05
  here? But just to give you I mean
• 14:08
  that. The size in 2024 is pretty
• 14:11
  massive, and then that's going to grow.
• 14:14
  And I think. The other day I was looking at
• 14:16
  direct to device. I mean that that market is
• 14:18
  somewhat decent, but it's expected to have a CAGR over the
• 14:21
  next 5 to 10 years of 100 percent, 100%, which is pretty.
• 14:25
  Crazy but but in. In satellites, as my point is
• 14:29
  like in space applications, communications is one of the
• 14:32
  biggest, it's 108 billion 2024 GPS or position navigation
• 14:38
  timing, that's another massive market it's.
• 14:41
  It's actually the biggest. It's at 260 billion in 2023.
• 14:46
  And then you've got government spending, which is 132 billion,
• 14:50
  which is obviously pretty big. And that's for like military and
• 14:52
  all these other applications. But aside from those markets,
• 14:57
  there's not much else. And so the fact that data
• 15:02
  centers are going to become a reality, it opens up a huge
• 15:08
  market in terms of Tam for space applications.
• 15:13
  And so I think, you know, just looking at some potential
• 15:18
  forecast for it, I mean, it's, it's not going to be as big as
• 15:22
  the communications market, but. Whether you're looking at, you
• 15:27
  know, various sources, it could reach, you know, 40 billion by
• 15:31
  2035 or perhaps 26 billion, but it's going to be very sizable,
• 15:35
  right? And it's it's an area of.
• 15:36
  Growth that. SpaceX is looking to tap into in
• 15:40
  order to. You know, pit project growth for
• 15:47
  potential investors, but also to power the things that they want
• 15:50
  to do around AI. And yeah, I won't go into too
• 15:54
  much detail as to why doing this stuff in space makes sense.
• 15:58
  I mean, the biggest element is cooling.
• 16:00
  I remember I did speak with the power bank CEO at one point and
• 16:07
  I'm not sure if I remember the number correctly, but I think
• 16:09
  like 40% of electricity for a data center is actually used to
• 16:14
  call the data center. And then like 60% is actually
• 16:16
  for a compute and you know, transmitting data and all that
• 16:19
  stuff. And so if you can take out that
• 16:22
  40% and do it more efficiently, which is in space, of course
• 16:25
  you've got to pay for that. You got to send, well, how many
• 16:28
  of your dollars per kilo up to space.
• 16:31
  But then once it's there on an ongoing basis that that.
• 16:34
  You know you can dedicate much more of the power to actually
• 16:38
  doing compute functions and communications.
• 16:41
  Because if you're able to solve heat dissipation, you know, by
• 16:45
  radiating that into space, whether you use whatever you
• 16:48
  know, various technologies, you can do that more efficiently.
• 16:51
  You also, as I've mentioned other spaces before, if you're
• 16:57
  doing that here on Earth, you have to make trade-offs because
• 17:01
  resources. Are and whether that's hey, I'm
• 17:05
  going to allocate land to build this map.
• 17:10
  Use land to grow food. I'm going to use nearby water,
• 17:14
  freshwater, because you don't want to use salt water.
• 17:16
  I'm going to use this water to cool the data center or I'm
• 17:18
  going to use it to grow crops and give water to people.
• 17:21
  And so at some point, it's not as if you can keep building data
• 17:26
  centers here on Earth into perpetuity like you.
• 17:29
  Actually, there has to be a cap on it.
• 17:31
  Right. And then I I remember.
• 17:33
  There's like some people saying, well, you can put data centers
• 17:36
  in really cold places or you can put them underwater, right?
• 17:39
  And well, if you put the data centers in the cold places,
• 17:41
  those cold places might not be as cold anymore.
• 17:44
  We might start melting parts of the Arctic.
• 17:47
  Or if you put them underwater, let's, let's eventually just
• 17:50
  boil the oceans like that. There's, there's limits to what
• 17:54
  you can do. And those limits have practical
• 17:58
  trade-offs between the well-being of humans or feeding
• 18:02
  the AI beast, right? And so that's why putting the
• 18:06
  some of the stuff, whether it's on the moon or it's in solar,
• 18:10
  you know, sun synchronous orbit over the Earth, that's those are
• 18:14
  the trade-offs you have to make. And So what one of the things
• 18:18
  that I thought was interesting is that.
• 18:20
  In the FCC. Application when they talk about
• 18:24
  decommissioning these things so eventually when the satellites
• 18:29
  run out their useful life I think the proposal is to
• 18:32
  actually. Have some level of propulsion on
• 18:35
  these. Satellites where they would
• 18:36
  just, they, and I might be reading this wrong, but, but
• 18:41
  they would, I guess push themselves out of orbit or, or,
• 18:45
  and then head towards the sun to, to burn up, which is an
• 18:48
  interesting, I guess solution because one of the biggest
• 18:51
  issues that I have with SpaceX and there are 10s of thousands
• 18:55
  of satellites that they're planning for communications.
• 18:59
  And then of course, some potentially 1,000,000 satellites
• 19:02
  or data centers is like, how do you get rid of this stuff?
• 19:05
  Either Hopefully you can reuse. Some of it.
• 19:07
  Which which you know you'll need orbit, something in orbit that
• 19:11
  can service this stuff, maybe make it go longer, but then
• 19:15
  maybe repurpose this stuff. Is is not easy.
• 19:18
  The other thing to do is just. Check out in space, which is
• 19:20
  what what they're what they're saying, which I think in honesty
• 19:23
  is a better solution than deorbiting it.
• 19:26
  Because if you deorbit this stuff, then then obviously all
• 19:30
  these different metals and material burn up into the
• 19:33
  atmosphere and then that's not good for humans.
• 19:36
  Because. You know, you don't want to, you
• 19:38
  don't want to put these metals into the atmosphere.
• 19:41
  I mean we can handle a decent amount, but we can't handle
• 19:46
  thousands and thousands of satellites deording every day.
• 19:49
  Which? By the way, like we're talking
• 19:52
  about Starlink, the eventuality of having 10s of thousands of
• 19:57
  satellites in their constellation that have that
• 20:00
  are. And this is, this is a plug for
• 20:03
  ASD Space Mobile. But having 10s of thousands of
• 20:05
  satellites in very low Earth orbit, which has a very rapid
• 20:10
  decay where you're expecting use of life for these satellites to
• 20:14
  be two to three years. Maybe that that we are going to
• 20:18
  hit a point at some point in the next few years where you're
• 20:22
  going to have hundreds and thousands, thousands of
• 20:25
  satellites burning up in the atmosphere.
• 20:28
  That's not good. And so I, I'm, I'm of the, I'm a
• 20:33
  fan of having, you know, a few 100 satellites in much higher
• 20:37
  orbit that have useful lives, lives of, you know, call it 710,
• 20:42
  perhaps even on the upper end 12 years.
• 20:46
  I think that's a better environmentally and performance
• 20:49
  wise, I think that's a better approach.
• 20:51
  But but going back to data centers, I think, yeah, this is
• 20:57
  a this is going to be a huge market and SpaceX is.
• 21:01
  Going to be a leader there there's obviously a lot of
• 21:05
  problems to solve and you've probably seen people tweeting
• 21:08
  about picking, you know, picking out little things here and there
• 21:12
  or and big things of how do you how do you heat these things?
• 21:16
  How do you dissipate heat? You know how much?
• 21:18
  Processing you can put up there, there's, there's all kinds of
• 21:21
  questions, right, But when you have really smart engineers
• 21:24
  attacking the problem. I I believe you'll eventually
• 21:28
  get there and it's and. To be quite.
• 21:30
  Candid like it's not that different from what?
• 21:32
  We're already doing today and, and I've harped on this point
• 21:35
  where ASD Space Mobile, Bluebird satellites, the Block 2
• 21:40
  satellites are, they've already got a tremendous amount of power
• 21:44
  generating capacity. And so I, I always talk about
• 21:48
  this when, when I had a conversation with one of the
• 21:51
  portfolio managers at Hennessy, who's, who's one of the few
• 21:55
  institutional investors who've been a long time holder of AST
• 21:58
  Space mobile. Well, we talked about the future
• 22:01
  markets for the company. And this is where, this is where
• 22:05
  like This is why a company like Tesla or Palantir or AST Space
• 22:12
  mobile for that matter, This is why they trade at high
• 22:14
  valuations, right? Because you, the market can see
• 22:18
  the, the general market can see like, oh, here's the core
• 22:21
  business. And, and for, for ASD, it's
• 22:23
  like, oh, they're doing direct advice connectivity, but then
• 22:27
  they don't really know and they haven't dug into the military
• 22:30
  applications right where we're expecting probably a few $100
• 22:36
  million in revenue in this coming year once the the
• 22:39
  constellations deployed just from military.
• 22:42
  But then you go beyond that. And this is where people start
• 22:48
  adding incremental value because of the optionality and
• 22:52
  expectations for what you've done, right?
• 22:54
  And so the Block 2 satellites, you have 100 to 120 kilowatts of
• 22:59
  power generating capacity. You've got these microns, this
• 23:04
  flat structure, these they're modular building blocks that
• 23:07
  have solar panels on one side, the phased ray antennas on the
• 23:11
  other. And then sandwiched in between,
• 23:13
  you've got a number of today FPGA processors which them are
• 23:19
  going to become ASICS when the company starts incorporating
• 23:22
  their proprietary ASIC and then you know connections between the
• 23:27
  processors. And then within that.
• 23:30
  Array. There's also the OR the the, the
• 23:35
  Micron actually releases heat and it's it, it's a, it's a, it
• 23:42
  dissipates heat and so. It's already there, it's all
• 23:44
  built. In and you've got this like
• 23:46
  massive, you know what I would call the block 2 is already a
• 23:50
  data center in space. I mean it's it's serving a
• 23:52
  specific function, which is communications, but it's not AI
• 23:55
  compute. However, the company has talked
• 23:57
  about the fact that the a six are running an AI algorithm to
• 24:01
  do efficient beam pouring. And so it doesn't take much to
• 24:08
  make the next leap, which is all right, you know what, let's take
• 24:11
  out the ASICS and let's put in some like very efficient TTP us,
• 24:17
  which are ASICS or GP us may not be able to put as many, but
• 24:21
  let's put some in there and let's see what happens, right.
• 24:24
  And so we, there's already the ability to do some of this
• 24:30
  stuff. Now it's not efficient, it's not
• 24:31
  optimized for data center application, but you can see
• 24:37
  that that, you know, doing some additional engineering, you
• 24:41
  could eventually get there, right.
• 24:43
  And so that's what the opportunity is for AST space
• 24:47
  mobile like you have this, you know, several times satellite
• 24:54
  that's already doing a high level of compute, but primarily
• 24:58
  focus on communications applications.
• 25:00
  But then you just, you make some changes and modifications to
• 25:03
  that and lo and behold, you have a data center, right?
• 25:07
  And so that. That is the.
• 25:09
  Opportunity and it's something that the market doesn't see, but
• 25:13
  it will see it because now. The you know, we talk about
• 25:17
  space companies garnering more interest with the SpaceX IPO.
• 25:22
  Well, guess what? Like, yeah, people are going to
• 25:24
  learn about directed the device, but they're also going to learn
• 25:26
  about AI data centers in space because that's that's why the
• 25:30
  company. SpaceX is going public and so
• 25:34
  people are going to clamor for OK, well, what are the ways to
• 25:36
  play this like aside from just owning SpaceX?
• 25:39
  And so there there was other players out there.
• 25:42
  I mean like Planet Labs is doing a pilot with.
• 25:46
  Google. To send an NVIDIA processor, I
• 25:50
  think sometime at the end of this year or early next year.
• 25:54
  And that will be in a cube sat form.
• 25:57
  And, and so, you know, that's one interesting way to play it,
• 26:02
  you know, I think, but you know, if you, if you think about the
• 26:06
  requirements for a data center and how big these things will
• 26:08
  be, or I think they'll be, I think AST has all the building
• 26:13
  blocks in place already. And by the way, like AST is
• 26:15
  already partnered with Google on doing communications, optimizing
• 26:20
  the, the satellite for Android devices.
• 26:23
  And so you could easily see. The fact that the.
• 26:25
  Companies already know each other and this is becoming a
• 26:29
  bigger. A a bigger opportunity and quite
• 26:33
  candidly for any player like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Open
• 26:39
  AI, any of them, like they're all going to have to find
• 26:42
  partnerships in order to make this reality because it's not
• 26:46
  something that these companies have a choice in it.
• 26:49
  It's going to happen and SpaceX is going to lead the way and in
• 26:53
  order not to be left behind, this is our arms race, it's
• 26:56
  space race. And so they're going to have to
• 26:57
  find good partners to. Develop, you know, data centers
• 27:03
  out in space and there's not many companies that are putting
• 27:06
  together 5 to 6 ton satellites that can do this right like
• 27:10
  planet I mentioned. Them before like they make small
• 27:13
  cube sats for Earth observation but they have not solved they've
• 27:17
  not gone through iterations of putting together a big honking
• 27:21
  satellite that has a solar array that can unfold in a very novel
• 27:26
  way to generate 100 to 120 kilowatts of power which by the
• 27:30
  way like. I I find it interesting that
• 27:32
  Elan, I guess it was like a month ago mentioned specifically
• 27:37
  like for a data center in space to work, you need 100 kilowatts
• 27:41
  power and so hey. Guess what?
• 27:43
  We've got that and we've got it in a way that fits into.
• 27:47
  A. A standard.
• 27:48
  Rocket fairing that can unfold and and we've already got you
• 27:53
  know several of them out in space now right and so.
• 27:56
  We we've solved probably were the hardest problems that, you
• 27:59
  know, generating the power and then two, managing that from a
• 28:02
  thermal perspective like dissipating.
• 28:04
  And so there aren't other companies out there that I know
• 28:09
  of. I think actually there's one
• 28:11
  company called, I think it's K2 space that's making their cling
• 28:14
  to fame's. They're making big satellites
• 28:16
  for big applications, but I I don't think they've put a
• 28:19
  satellite up in space yet. But anyway, there's going to be
• 28:22
  a bunch of new players that emerge.
• 28:24
  And, and it's going to be exciting and it's not going.
• 28:27
  To be winner take all market because I, I don't see I don't
• 28:32
  see some of these other companies working with SpaceX or
• 28:35
  this stuff because it's too important, right and so.
• 28:39
  And I think, you know, obviously Alan's a visionary and, and he's
• 28:42
  good at what he does and, and, but that said, I, I think for
• 28:47
  some of these companies, they probably don't from a
• 28:49
  competitive standpoint, they don't trust them.
• 28:52
  And so they'll want to build their own solutions and so.
• 28:55
  When you look at the landscape of who else those companies can
• 28:57
  work with, then there's there's one obvious choice, which is AST
• 29:01
  Space Mobile. There's other companies too that
• 29:03
  will build parts of this or could build the entire thing
• 29:06
  too. I mean, maybe Rocket Lab moves
• 29:08
  into it. I'd be shocked if they didn't.
• 29:11
  And you know, there's other companies as well that are out
• 29:15
  there. But the important point is that
• 29:18
  this is a real market. It's early, but it's going to be
• 29:22
  huge. And.
• 29:24
  It's going to add to this, it's going to be another vertical for
• 29:28
  aside from communications and defense, that's going to be and
• 29:33
  and GPS that's going to be very big.
• 29:35
  Because again, some of these other applications, they're
• 29:37
  interesting, but they're, they're small.
• 29:41
  And so I think you know, for, for some of the companies that
• 29:45
  I'm involved in, obviously AST space mobile is probably the
• 29:50
  best way to play unless you, you have exposure to SpaceX.
• 29:54
  Whether directly or indirectly. And by the way, like I, I
• 29:58
  tweeted this out earlier, I mean Scott Wisniewski and the
• 30:01
  company, they, they know about this stuff, they're following
• 30:03
  it. And they probably have been
• 30:05
  approached by some of the big players in tech about this idea.
• 30:10
  And for those that. Don't know, you know the company
• 30:13
  is out at a cadence of producing 6 satellites a month and they're
• 30:17
  they've made plans to expand that to eventually 12 satellites
• 30:21
  a month. And so once the constellation.
• 30:24
  You know the. Low band block 2 satellites are
• 30:28
  up and then the mid bands block 3 satellites are up.
• 30:32
  Or maybe during that process as well?
• 30:36
  Once those are up, you're going to have this tremendous amount
• 30:38
  of capacity to build satellites. And so the company a, a smart,
• 30:44
  you know, use of that capacity would be to then start building
• 30:46
  data centers, right, Because you've already have the.
• 30:49
  Tooling, you've got the people, you've got the know how, you've
• 30:52
  got 3800 patents, patent pending claims, you've got the supply
• 30:57
  chain, you've got everything so. The, the most logical, you know,
• 31:03
  economic use of that capacity is to build data centers.
• 31:07
  And as I mentioned before, like there's not even primes like the
• 31:11
  large US primes, like they can't build this stuff right because
• 31:15
  they're those guys are slow moving, bureaucratic.
• 31:20
  You know, cost plus. They they don't iterate quickly
• 31:23
  I think like ViaSat. I forgot which prime they used,
• 31:27
  but you know. The satellites that that.
• 31:29
  Were being built by. Prime were took, you know, they
• 31:33
  were like several years too late and way over budget, right.
• 31:37
  And so it's this next generation of companies that are going to
• 31:40
  make this vision a reality. And so that's really exciting.
• 31:44
  And I think that's where, for example, some of these short
• 31:47
  sellers, they just don't get it. They're like, OK, this company
• 31:49
  is doing one particular thing and they, they don't realize,
• 31:52
  no, there's, there's a multitude of things like once you've
• 31:55
  master this particular area in space and you've got IP, you've
• 32:00
  got production capacity and supply chain and everything, you
• 32:04
  can then take on the next problem.
• 32:06
  Like it's, it's not that big of a stretch.
• 32:09
  If anything, it just leverages everything you have in place,
• 32:11
  like you have the building blocks.
• 32:13
  And so that's where things for ASDC mobile are really exciting,
• 32:18
  right. And and so I did mention some
• 32:21
  other tickers in this, you know, for example, T1 energy, which is
• 32:25
  making silicon based top con solar panels, you know, they
• 32:31
  make modules and and and cells. This whole idea of solar
• 32:38
  powering whether it's terrestrially.
• 32:40
  So we trying to meet terrestrial demand, which is, which is
• 32:44
  massive in of itself, but then all of a sudden you're going to
• 32:48
  need gigawatts of power out in space that's got to come from
• 32:51
  somewhere, right? And so, and it's not, it's not
• 32:54
  specialized solar either. It's actually so taking going
• 32:58
  back to this ASD space mobile case, ASD actually takes
• 33:02
  commercial grade solar, solar panels and then they harden them
• 33:05
  for space. And then they put.
• 33:07
  Them out in space and so it's not they're not going after
• 33:12
  they're not using. I forget what the the technology
• 33:16
  is that's very expensive, but it's not silicon top top con.
• 33:20
  It's it's actually but but the efficiency of silicon top con is
• 33:25
  such that it's got to a point where it's good enough for space
• 33:29
  and as long as you can harden it for, you know, radiation,
• 33:32
  temperature changes, all those things, it works.
• 33:35
  And that's what AST is doing. And so that's why when I tweet
• 33:37
  about T1 Energy, it's not like T1 is planning to sell.
• 33:42
  Well, maybe they will, but they're not selling their
• 33:44
  current technology to vendors who are incorporating that into
• 33:49
  satellites. But eventually that will happen
• 33:52
  because you're going to need like if Ilan is saying, I think
• 33:58
  it was like 100 gigawatts of, of power that they're going to need
• 34:03
  on space, you're going to need to draw on all sources of solar
• 34:09
  production down here, right? And so whether that's the high
• 34:13
  end stuff or the lower end stuff, it's going to draw
• 34:17
  demand. And even for players that are
• 34:20
  not involved in space, they're the pricings go up.
• 34:22
  It's just like here, here's a great analogy, right?
• 34:24
  Like think about Micron and DRAM.
• 34:29
  Now Micron, you know, for and, and this, this is goes as well
• 34:33
  for hard drives and then flash, you know, it was a very
• 34:36
  commodity product and, and you know, you could easily get your
• 34:42
  64 gigs of RAM for your PC and it was pretty cheap.
• 34:46
  Nowadays, like you, you can't because all that's being
• 34:49
  consumed by data centers. And so even Micron was like,
• 34:52
  Hey, you know what we're not making, we're not making memory
• 34:55
  for PCs anymore. We're actually just focusing
• 34:57
  entirely on data centers. And so that's the when, when,
• 35:01
  when I make a, the point about solar production and demand,
• 35:06
  that's exactly what I'm pointing to, which is the fact that when
• 35:09
  you have a, an application and then in this case it's, it's AI
• 35:13
  data centers here on Earth, but also eventually in space, it's
• 35:16
  going to suck up so much demand that I don't know if there will
• 35:19
  be enough solar panels left to, for people to put on their
• 35:23
  homes, right, Because all that stuff is going to go to data
• 35:26
  centers and out in space. So that's why I think, you know,
• 35:29
  companies like T1 Energy are well positioned because they're
• 35:32
  building US capacity to make this stuff right.
• 35:36
  And so once they get their solar, you know, they already
• 35:40
  have a solar module plant that's that's building, you know, 5
• 35:43
  gigawatts of capacity every year.
• 35:46
  They're standing up a solar fab, which will be the end of this
• 35:49
  year for five gigawatts, which will feed cells into the module
• 35:53
  factory. And the reason why, and that's
• 35:54
  important is that the US is very focused on domestic content.
• 35:58
  And so by doing both that vertically, it will be, you
• 36:03
  know, they, they're able to get, you know, tax subsidies, which
• 36:06
  are credits that that are incentivizing more US production
• 36:10
  of this stuff. But then once those two things
• 36:14
  are up, you know, it's not like the company's going to stop
• 36:16
  there. They're going to build more
• 36:17
  plants just like what Tesla's doing.
• 36:18
  I mean, Tesla announced that they're building.
• 36:22
  What was it? I think it's they want to get to
• 36:24
  100 gigawatts and all that's going to be consumed internally.
• 36:28
  And so that's where the puck is. Going.
• 36:30
  Like solar is the way to go. Like, yeah, nuclear is
• 36:33
  interesting, but you're probably looking at 1020 years out for it
• 36:37
  to actually make a real impact. Like solar is here now.
• 36:40
  And so that's why in particular, I'm very excited about T1
• 36:43
  Energy. I also talked about ASTI which
• 36:47
  is a micro. Cap Company.
• 36:48
  And. There's other people who.
• 36:50
  Who followed it much more closely than I have and I I like
• 36:54
  have a small spec position in it and you know it makes some
• 36:57
  interesting thin film solar modules and they I think you
• 37:03
  know they're they're they're flexible and you can put them
• 37:06
  into space applications. The company has spent a lot of
• 37:09
  money on R&D. I'm not sure, you know, from a
• 37:13
  commercial perspective, they've never gotten there.
• 37:15
  They have interesting technology, but they just
• 37:17
  haven't been able to commercialize yet, Although they
• 37:19
  recently raised money and they've said like, Hey, we have
• 37:22
  these customers who are interested in, in utilizing
• 37:24
  technology. But you know, it's, it's one of
• 37:27
  these companies that have been, that has been a serial fund, you
• 37:32
  know, funding vehicle where they, you to raise money and
• 37:35
  money money. And they just haven't got there.
• 37:37
  But at the same time, like, I think now it's, it's, we're at
• 37:41
  one of those points where maybe this company can work, right?
• 37:44
  Because there's so much demand and they've got interesting
• 37:47
  tech. Maybe the company gets bought
• 37:48
  out or maybe they are able to ramp commercially and, and it
• 37:53
  starts becoming interesting. But anyway, I, I mentioned that
• 37:55
  'cause there's few people I respect that, that are involved.
• 37:58
  And so like, I have a small position in it.
• 38:00
  And the other one I want to talk about is power bank, which is
• 38:05
  interestingly, and I talked to the CEO briefly.
• 38:08
  I guess it was like a few weeks ago just to learn more about the
• 38:10
  company, But they, they make their focus on like smaller
• 38:17
  solar projects, but pretty large in size.
• 38:19
  I mean, this is primarily like residential.
• 38:21
  And small businesses. But if you can imagine, like
• 38:23
  they're not doing, they're not pulling it, putting up a solar
• 38:26
  panel on your home, they're actually making a solar farm
• 38:29
  that powers our community. And so when I spoke to CEO,
• 38:33
  this, this guy, Doctor Richard Liu, they are, he has, he has
• 38:38
  bigger ambitions, like he wants to move, pivot the company or
• 38:43
  move the company up the chain to be more focused on what
• 38:46
  eventually he views as future, which is data centers having
• 38:51
  behind the meter power, which in his mind is solar and battery.
• 38:56
  And So what that means is like, and he's a big proponent of
• 38:58
  this, you know, the grid today is very old and decrepit.
• 39:04
  And and so even if you build nuclear, solar, all these
• 39:09
  different energy sources, you can't build them away from where
• 39:13
  it's needed because the grid just can't handle any more
• 39:17
  power, right? It can't transmit it.
• 39:19
  And so. What happens in the future, what
• 39:22
  will happen when people talk about behind the meter, what
• 39:24
  they mean is that you actually, if you build a data center
• 39:29
  tomorrow, you actually will then build a big solar farm, you
• 39:34
  know, on top. Of it you.
• 39:35
  Will put some of the panels, you obviously put some batteries
• 39:37
  there as well, but it all that stuff's going to be behind the
• 39:40
  meter, meaning you're not drawing energy from Con Ed or.
• 39:45
  Or one of these other, you know, utilities, you're actually
• 39:47
  generating as much power as you can behind the meter.
• 39:50
  And, and that's the only way to really, especially for these,
• 39:54
  you know, data centers that are running AI applications, that's
• 39:57
  the only way to power them. And so there's companies that
• 40:00
  are doing putting gas turbines. And so even like companies that
• 40:04
  build jet engines are are getting into this business where
• 40:08
  it's like, OK, we're going to take some type of fuel, whether
• 40:12
  it's gas or kerosene or whatever, and we're going to put
• 40:14
  these right next to the data centers and we're going to
• 40:16
  generate the power. In the end, it's like repurposed
• 40:19
  jet engines or, or in this case, you know, solar.
• 40:23
  But what what this CEO wants to do is he wants to use his
• 40:27
  expertise to then go and he's not pursuing like Google or
• 40:32
  Microsoft or some of these big data centers, Amazon, he's
• 40:35
  looking at more small medium enterprises, right?
• 40:38
  And, and doing those type of projects.
• 40:41
  So that's like, that's part of the interesting aspect of the
• 40:43
  company. And then of course they.
• 40:45
  And I I I need to dig in more because I don't.
• 40:47
  Know what level of IP they have or they bring to the table, but
• 40:52
  you know they they. Have this pilot project with
• 40:54
  this company called Orbital AI which is.
• 40:57
  You know, they're primarily focused on I think blockchain
• 40:59
  doing blockchain processing and validation out in space.
• 41:04
  And there's a whole host of reasons why that could that
• 41:06
  makes some sense. But but then of course you can.
• 41:09
  Anything is blockchain related, that's data center and you can,
• 41:12
  you can. Extrapolate that to AI.
• 41:15
  Right. But what this company, Power
• 41:17
  Bank is doing is they, they provided the solar, you know,
• 41:22
  panel, the solar technology, the electrical management, thermal
• 41:26
  management, all that stuff for this test satellite which put
• 41:29
  up, I believe, I believe in an NVIDIA processor as a proof of
• 41:34
  concept. And so they did that, I guess it
• 41:36
  was maybe a few weeks ago. And so Power Bank, you know,
• 41:41
  they changed the name of the company to Power Bank because
• 41:43
  they, they're trying to pivot to be something a bit broader than
• 41:46
  just doing solar projects here especially.
• 41:49
  But they they're, they have ambitions of data centers down
• 41:53
  here. And then of course, doing these
• 41:55
  applications out in space. And so, yeah, it's an
• 41:58
  interesting company. It's, let me just look to verify
• 42:02
  this. It's a smaller market cap
• 42:04
  company. I mean, it's not too small.
• 42:06
  It's like I think it's around, it says 45 million in Bloomberg,
• 42:13
  but I think that's higher because they do have some
• 42:16
  securities that are dilutive as well, but maybe maybe it's more
• 42:19
  like 70 or 80 million in size. But you know, this is a real
• 42:22
  company. Like they did they have a June
• 42:25
  fiscal year or so in 2025 they did 41 million of revenue and
• 42:28
  gross margins, you know kind of low 25%, but there were almost
• 42:33
  basically break even in terms of EBITDA.
• 42:36
  And then for 26, you know, they they're going up to 63 million,
• 42:41
  2787 million and you know, so. Growing pretty well.
• 42:45
  And they expect gross margin to get to and this is the street,
• 42:48
  by the way, so gross margin to get to.
• 42:50
  Kind of the mid. 50s by 28 or so and EBITDA profitability
• 42:56
  probably by, let's see, June 2027.
• 43:00
  So what's interesting is that, you know, the company actually
• 43:02
  does have research coverage. There's like four or five banks
• 43:05
  that cover it. It's a small company.
• 43:07
  You know, when I spoke with the CEO, he was like, you know, we,
• 43:11
  we actually spent quite a bit of money.
• 43:13
  I think it's like 8 or $10 million to stay listed on
• 43:16
  NASDAQ. And and so this guy from what I
• 43:19
  can tell, like he's not, he's not raising money down here.
• 43:22
  Like he, I think when they, when they listed on NASDAQ, the stock
• 43:26
  was like it, it hit 5 or $6. And so I think his ambitions are
• 43:31
  for the company to kind of get back to that.
• 43:33
  Level. And from what I understand, like
• 43:35
  they don't need to raise money. They do have people going to
• 43:38
  them asking them to raise money, but he refuses.
• 43:42
  So I think it's kind of an interesting name that I started,
• 43:46
  you know, dabbling in a little bit, but, you know, it just kind
• 43:49
  of plays on the the theme of solar being an important
• 43:55
  contributor to EA data center needs.
• 43:57
  And then in this instance, like you're a real company that's,
• 44:01
  you know, that's seasoned, that has built solar projects, that's
• 44:04
  looking to go into small, medium enterprise type of data center
• 44:09
  applications. And then they're expanding into
• 44:10
  space with like one of the few few, you know, pilot programs
• 44:16
  where there's one satellite out there already doing on space
• 44:20
  compute. So anyway, but yeah, but yeah, I
• 44:23
  think, I guess to wrap this up, I don't want to go too far too
• 44:25
  long, but I think, you know, I, I was looking at Ilan's profile,
• 44:32
  Twitter profile right now and he's just, you know, he, he's
• 44:37
  just tweeting a tweet storm of how AI data centers are going to
• 44:42
  be, you know, in space are going to be the next big thing.
• 44:45
  And, and yeah, I, I, I think it's important, you know, to
• 44:49
  have some level of skepticism, but also the guy is pretty good
• 44:53
  at seeing where the puck is going.
• 44:55
  And I would never really fade his ability to, to have the
• 44:59
  clarity to see where the big dollars are going.
• 45:02
  And obviously, like, you know, he is talking his book to a
• 45:05
  degree and. And a key.
• 45:07
  Issue for SpaceX is finding enough cargo and cargo to take
• 45:12
  up to space to fill Starship. And so this is a, this is a, you
• 45:18
  know, a logical way to do that, right?
• 45:21
  And so I think the skeptics back in, you know, the early 2000s,
• 45:27
  what was it? Maybe 2, 2010, 12/13/14 when
• 45:31
  SpaceX was putting up Starlink, a lot of skeptics were like, you
• 45:34
  know, that he's just doing that because he's got to raise more
• 45:37
  money and no one's there's no not enough cargo, which is true.
• 45:41
  There wasn't enough cargo to make SpaceX economically viable.
• 45:44
  And so he had to pursue a big market, which is communications.
• 45:48
  And so Fast forward to today, what was it?
• 45:52
  I think on the the tweets that we've seen recently on
• 45:54
  disclosures for SpaceX, they're going to do what 1516 million
• 45:58
  billion, sorry billion of revenue and EBITDA of like 8
• 46:03
  billion. And so that's pretty impressive.
• 46:06
  That's impressive for a launch company which you know of course
• 46:10
  60 to 70% of those revenues and financial contribution probably
• 46:15
  higher on the cash flow side comes from Starlink and so.
• 46:19
  You know the next. Big extension for them to
• 46:22
  justify Starship because again, there's not going to be enough
• 46:25
  customers to send payload up is to do data centers.
• 46:28
  And so it's going to happen. It's going to happen.
• 46:31
  And if you are an investor in AST Space Mobile or Rocket Lab
• 46:39
  or some of these other companies, you're in the right
• 46:43
  place. And it's something you know, we
• 46:45
  always say it's better to be lucky than smart.
• 46:48
  We probably are quite lucky because I can say I'm lucky
• 46:51
  because when I saw the tweets about in Star cloud CEO talking
• 46:56
  about data centers in space back in maybe it was like October or
• 47:00
  September, I Pooh poohed it. I was like, yeah, whatever, that
• 47:02
  doesn't make any sense. But then as I peeled the layers
• 47:06
  of the onion and really dug into it, I was like, Oh my God, this
• 47:09
  is huge. This is going to be big.
• 47:11
  And, and I just happened to hold shares in the company that can
• 47:15
  capitalize it, capitalize on it, right?
• 47:17
  And it's, it's something new. And, and of course, like the
• 47:21
  company still needs to get its consolation up, but it's well
• 47:24
  positioned to take the next step.
• 47:25
  And, and I've actually told the company this, I've said, hey, I
• 47:29
  think you guys should, if you're, if you already haven't,
• 47:32
  you should form a Group, A skunk works group to focus.
• 47:35
  Solely on this. Of, of taking leveraging, you
• 47:39
  know, Bluebird technology and everything you've learned and
• 47:42
  start thinking about the next the next step, which is a data
• 47:47
  centers and. You know the company.
• 47:49
  To their credit, they've already when we talk about Block 2 and
• 47:52
  Block 3, they they've already iterated on generations that are
• 47:56
  380. Four out already.
• 47:58
  And this is, I know this 'cause I, I was, I've talked with the
• 48:01
  company about it. Maybe it was like 2 years ago.
• 48:03
  And, and they're like, hey, well, you know, you guys are
• 48:06
  focused on this next generation. We're already thinking four or
• 48:08
  five generations out. And so I would not be surprised
• 48:12
  if they weren't already doing this.
• 48:13
  And I tweeted before, you know, Scott had mentioned the fact
• 48:16
  that they're vertically integrated.
• 48:17
  They have all the building blocks where they can do data
• 48:20
  centers in space. And so it's not as if it's an
• 48:22
  aha moment where I'm coming to them or, or some random Twitter
• 48:27
  people are coming to them. And say hey you should do this.
• 48:28
  And and they're like, Oh yeah, that's great.
• 48:31
  Yes, good idea. We're going to do it.
• 48:33
  They're already doing it. They're already doing it.
• 48:35
  And so that's where again, when it comes to the market, when
• 48:41
  people. It's like the skeptics are like,
• 48:44
  oh, this company. Is only did 14 million of
• 48:46
  revenue and of course, yeah, everybody values companies based
• 48:49
  off of historic results, right? I'm joking, by the way.
• 48:53
  But but they they see they see as a.
• 48:57
  Description in Bloomberg. Or they, they, they have a very
• 49:02
  minor understanding the company, they've done their 5 minutes due
• 49:05
  diligence, but but they don't understand.
• 49:07
  If you dig a bit deeper, it's like, oh, this is, this is
• 49:11
  NVIDIA doing gaming graphic cards back in the 90s.
• 49:18
  And, and that's our level of understanding where it's like,
• 49:20
  no, actually NVIDIA GPUs are going to become the brains and
• 49:24
  the power, you know, the processing power behind the AI
• 49:27
  revolution. You've got to think bigger.
• 49:29
  You've got to look beyond your nose.
• 49:31
  You've got to be able to understand where the puck is
• 49:35
  going and what that means. And, and yeah, I, I think for
• 49:40
  those people who are involved in the space sector, it's a very
• 49:44
  exciting time. Like 2026 is going to be the
• 49:46
  year. And you've got and, and, and
• 49:49
  that sound like a broken record, but you've got the Trump
• 49:52
  administration that is focused on American superiority in
• 49:55
  space. You've got all these tailwinds.
• 49:58
  You've got, of course, SpaceX going public that's going to
• 50:00
  educate pretty much the entire institutional investor universe
• 50:05
  about space, most of which I've Pooh poohed it and and looked
• 50:08
  away and like it's, it's a niche area.
• 50:11
  It's not. You've got the largest IPO
• 50:14
  coming to market for a company that's going to be 1.5 trillion
• 50:17
  in value, which may or may not also be attached to XAI or
• 50:22
  Tesla, which then takes that to more like 3 trillion, two to
• 50:25
  three trillion and depending on which which they merge with, if
• 50:28
  they do. And so that institutional
• 50:32
  shuttle base is going to be turned on to these other names.
• 50:35
  And, and of course they're going to look at them and say, well,
• 50:37
  and you know, the, the initial reaction is for the ones who,
• 50:42
  who are small minded, it's like, oh, but you know, SpaceX is
• 50:44
  going to win everything. So I'm not going to touch these
• 50:46
  things. Whereas the others who actually,
• 50:49
  you know, use their brain will, will understand like, oh, this
• 50:53
  is not a winner take all market. And there's going to be multiple
• 50:56
  players. There's going to be the Elan
• 51:00
  vertically integrated stack. And then you're going to have
• 51:03
  everybody. Else and these everybody else's,
• 51:05
  they're not tiny companies. You've got Google, you've got
• 51:08
  Apple, you've got Microsoft, you've got open AI, you got a
• 51:14
  whole host of players Meta. I didn't even talk about meta.
• 51:18
  And so they're going to need space expertise and and none of
• 51:21
  those companies today do anything in space.
• 51:23
  I mean, they they do it through partnerships.
• 51:25
  But I mean, just look at like Meta and Google when they tried
• 51:28
  to provide Internet from high altitude balloons like that,
• 51:31
  that was, in my opinion, pretty harebrained idea, but they're
• 51:36
  going to need somebody who knows what they're doing in space.
• 51:39
  And so I mentioned this in tweet this past week, like there's
• 51:43
  going to be large investments, large partnerships with space
• 51:47
  companies. And I'm not even talking about
• 51:49
  like the terrestrial data center guys, right?
• 51:51
  Like IRNNBIS, Cor Weave, all these companies, like they're
• 51:58
  all doing stuff down here, but they have no idea what they're
• 52:00
  doing in space. And so they need to go partner
• 52:01
  with someone, right, 'cause they are, if they, you know, they
• 52:07
  have the expertise in certain areas, but they're, they, I
• 52:10
  don't know how, how much you can parlay that into doing space
• 52:15
  applications. And so they're, I mean, you hear
• 52:18
  it here first, like there's going to be partnerships that
• 52:21
  arise from those particular companies with space companies.
• 52:24
  And then also the carriers too, like, so whether that's AT&T,
• 52:29
  Verizon, Vodafone, all these companies, they all do data
• 52:32
  center stuff now. They provide interconnectivity.
• 52:34
  They do hosting all that. Oh, hey, this company is key
• 52:38
  space mobile that I'm already working with.
• 52:39
  Like they can help me get to space.
• 52:42
  And so, yeah, the, the, the, the possibilities are endless.
• 52:46
  And, and so that's where guys like and gals like you and me
• 52:51
  retail we can, we're not looking at quarter to quarter
• 52:56
  performance and fluctuation of what a company's doing.
• 52:59
  We're actually are able to see and have that, that moment of
• 53:03
  clarity where we can see the future like what's going to
• 53:06
  happen, right. And so that's where, that's
• 53:09
  where you have companies that you know, when, when ASD was at
• 53:14
  $2.00, no one could see beyond their nose.
• 53:16
  But for those that stuck with it and understood the enormity of
• 53:21
  the opportunity and, and this is again, just a handful of
• 53:24
  applications, that's becoming a reality.
• 53:27
  And then, and then once the company builds that foundation
• 53:31
  and of course they've, they've raised the capital, they've
• 53:33
  built production capacity, then they can attack the other, the
• 53:38
  other areas of opportunity. And so with that, I'll end this
• 53:42
  talk now. I've got the whole rest of the
• 53:45
  day that I got to. Take care.
• 53:47
  Do some stuff with the family and I'm not saying that.
• 53:49
  That's a burden or anything but. But yeah, I, I was, I woke up
• 53:54
  this morning, I had some ideas and I was like, I need to do a
• 53:56
  space. But but yeah, I think, I think
• 53:59
  the the noise and the drum beat around data centers in space is
• 54:04
  going to become. Louder and louder.
• 54:05
  It's going to become inevitable like we talked about with AST
• 54:08
  services, inevitable. It's it's coming.
• 54:11
  And so I think I think what I talked about before about the
• 54:16
  ingredients going to the IPO for Space XI think the stock price
• 54:20
  is going to start discounting a lot more than even even I
• 54:23
  expect. And so that's where you go, you
• 54:26
  know, credit to Professor Kevin Mack of Stanford where he talked
• 54:31
  about AST potentially reaching S rank cult status.
• 54:35
  I think that's possible. And so when you have that, where
• 54:37
  people start ascribing value for these these huge growth areas
• 54:43
  that that people can see that consensus does not, that's where
• 54:47
  things can get, you know, in our mind or how we, I guess people
• 54:51
  label it. That's where things can get
• 54:53
  crazy. So on it there.
• 54:55
  Hope everyone is having a great weekend and we'll catch up again
• 54:59
  soon. I'll probably have more stuff to
• 55:01
  say and and I'm hoping to spend more research time on this area.
• 55:06
  But but yeah, it's exciting. I'm looking forward to next
• 55:09
  week. I know we ended January kind of
• 55:11
  poorly in terms of the overall markets, but I do, you know, I'm
• 55:15
  very optimistic about the future and especially for the space
• 55:21
  sector for renewable energy. I know people hate saying
• 55:24
  renewable, but solar I think is going to be the place to be.
• 55:27
  And yeah, so space and solar are the two s s.
• 55:30
  I think that's that's where you want to for big markets where
• 55:34
  you want to lay your bets. But thanks everyone for joining
• 55:37
  and we'll talk again soon. Take care.
• 55:41
  Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 55:45
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
• 55:47
  podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social
• 55:51
  media, or leave a rating and review.
• 55:53
  To catch all the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make
• 55:57
  sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 56:00
  next time. We're doing something very, very
• 56:05
  big and actually with this technology we can really affect
• 56:08
  billion lives. AFT Space Global is the only
• 56:11
  company that has good technology to deliver several broadband
• 56:16
  connectivity directly through state in every day as much
• 56:20
  people will just basically turn your phone and be seamless.
• 56:24
  But regardless of where you are, we don't want the user even to
• 56:26
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 56:29
  Our role is to bring this into reality always in
• 56:33
  pharmaceutically MMO.