When Baiju Bhatt left his role as Robinhood’s chief creative director last year, only those near him could have predicted his next move.
If people aren’t paying much attention, that’s fine with Bhatt, who co-founded the trading app in 2013, five years after completing his master’s degree in mathematics at Stanford. That means there is less competition from his new company, aetherfluxso far, it has raised $60 million to prove that sparkling solar power from space is not science fiction, but a new chapter in both renewable energy and national defense.
“If you happen to be an aerospace company until you do things in space, then you’re actually an ambitious space company,” Batt said Wednesday night. TechCrunch StrictlyVc Event It was held in a glass-walled building on Sandhill Road in Menlo Park. “We would like to move from an “ambitious space company” to a “space company” sooner. ”
Bat’s universe ambitions date back to his childhood. He says his father, who worked as an optometrist in India, will apply for a decade into the US Graduate Physics program, and will eventually make a hard left turn and land at NASA as a research scientist.
He then proceeded to use his son’s powers of inverse psychology, says Batt. “My dad worked for NASA throughout my entire childhood,” he said, “He was very stubborn. This is a very effective way to persuade someone to do just that.”
Now, at about the same age, when his father joined NASA, Batt has his own movement into space.
He certainly swings big with effort.
The traditional concept of space solar power is focused on giant Earth-layer satellites, using microwave transmission to use energy to beams on Earth. Due to scale and complexity, these projects have been constantly “twenty years away,” Batt said Wednesday night. “Everything was too big. The size of the array, the size of the spacecraft was the size of a small city. It’s a real science fiction thing.”
His solution, he suggested, was much smaller and more agile. Most notably, instead of large-scale microwave antennas that require accurate phase adjustment, etherflux satellites use fiber lasers, essentially returning solar power to concentrated light that can accurately target ground receivers.
“We take solar power that we collect from the sun with solar panels, take that energy, put it in a series of diodes, and brighten it,” Batt said. “The light can enter a fiber that has the laser and direct it towards the ground.”
The idea is to launch a demonstration satellite in June next year.
National Security, first
Bhatt expects to ultimately build a “true industrial-scale energy company,” but he starts with national defense. In fact, the Department of Defense has approved funding for AetherFlux’s program, recognizing the military value of beam power to transfer bases without nightmares of fuel-carrying logistics. “It allows the United States to put energy out on the battlefield,” Batt explained.
The precision bat is promising. AetherFlux’s first target is a laser spot “larger than 10 meters in diameter” on the ground, but Bhatt believes it can be reduced to “5-10 meters, even smaller.” These compact lightweight receivers “have little strategic value when captured by an enemy,” “smacked enough, portable enough, literally can be taken to the battlefield.”
The success of AetherFlux could potentially change the game of American military operations around the world.
So why isn’t someone already doing what AetherFlux is trying to do? As It attracted attention last year In space news, Research from 2007 The approach found promises and recommended more research, but no one acted on the report (Bhatt said he didn’t know that). In any case, for Batt, it is an overlooked opportunity that is like an outsider is in a suitable position to seize. Certainly, in addition to his own father, Batt said that if you are interested and willing to work hard, you are inspired by someone else who has proven you can master multiple industries, Elon Musk. That outsider’s perspective “actually it’s an advantage,” Batt told the crowd.
Of course, unlike the repetitive spirit of a company like Robinhood, it can be deployed. Rollback,Software features, Space Hardware include much higher interests. You will only get one shot when the satellite is activated.
“We build one spacecraft, bolt it to the fairing inside the SpaceX rocket, put it in space, and it peels off and then do a better job,” Batt said. “You can’t go there and tighten the bolts.”
During the sit-in, when asked how he would pressure test his spacecraft, Batt said that Ether Flux is pursuing a “hardware-rich” approach. “The right balance doesn’t wait five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, as is the case with many important space programs,” he said. “People’s careers are often shorter than that.”
He also said that if AetherFlux is successful, its impact is far beyond military applications. Space-based solar power can provide baseload renewable energy, solar power that works day and night, anywhere on the planet. That might mean upside down the way we currently think about energy distribution. Provides power to remote locations without large infrastructure investments and emergency power during disasters.
AetherFlux already employs a mix of physicians, mathematicians and engineers such as Lawrence Livermore Labs, Rivian, Cruise and SpaceX, with Bhatt saying 25 organizations still employ it. “If you’re someone who wants to tackle something very difficult, come on and contact us,” he told attendees.
Batt has more than his reputation for what happens from here. He self-funded AetherFlux’s first $10 million, and he also says he contributed to the recent $50 million round led by Index Ventures and Interlago.
AetherFlux timeline is also aggressive. Plans to launch the demonstration satellite in just a year means that it is basically around the corner.
Still, there is a prototype of Bhatt’s approach. GPS began as a DARPA project before becoming an omniscient private infrastructure. Similarly, AetherFlux works closely with Dr. Paul Jaffe, a beam expert at DARPA, who Bhatt called “a pretty good friend of our company.” Jaffe also works with other companies developing similar technologies to position DARPA as a bridge between military applications and commercial potential.
“There’s this precedent of doing things in space where there’s really important aspects to working with government,” Batt said. “But we actually have a matured technology over time. [SpaceX’s reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle] Starship really opens up commercial access to space. This is more than just the Department of Defense. ”
