Besxar is building an orbital semiconductor factory, one SpaceX rocket at a time
Besxar, founded by a former OpenAI staffer, raised ~$14M to prototype semiconductor manufacturing in orbit using SpaceX Falcon 9 booster flights.
Besxar, founded by former OpenAI staffer Ashley Pilipiszyn, raised almost $14 million, including a $9 million seed led by Dauntless Ventures and Overture VC, to build orbital semiconductor fabrication. Its first two "fabship" canisters flew on a July Starlink mission and returned wafer samples cleaner than comparable terrestrial wafers. The company plans to iterate over two years with a dozen Falcon 9 booster flights before flying larger fabs on Starship, targeting wafers for power-regulation chips used in data centers, robots, and electric vehicles.
- Raised ~$14M including a $9M seed led by Dauntless Ventures and Overture VC
- Two fabship canisters flew on a July Starlink mission and returned clean wafers
- Plans a dozen Falcon 9 booster flights to test wafer heating and deposition
- Competitors include United Semiconductors and Space Forge
- Vendors
- Besxar
- Organizations
- SpaceXDauntless VenturesOverture VC
From the original article
3 min read at techcrunch.com
If you want to manufacture in space—and bring the products back again—there’s a limited set of options: Wait to go to the International Space Station, or partner with a handful of start-ups launching spacecraft that spend time in orbit before they return to Earth. But the vehicle that goes to space and comes back to […]
By Tim Fernholz · techcrunch.com
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