Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Axiom Space Launches Fourth Private Crew Mission with Axiom Space CEO Tejpaul Bhatia 7/7/25

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Axiom Space recently launched its fourth private crew mission to the International Space Station. AX-4-- sponsored by India, Poland and Hungary-- lifted off from Florida in a SpaceX capsule last week and is currently completing a two-week tour on the ISS. It was the first mission under CEO Tejpaul Bhatia, a serial entrepreneur with experience from Google, who took the helm at Axiom Space earlier this year. He joins Morgan Brennan to discuss the mission, alongside the company's development of its own commercial space station and lunar space suits for Prada.

Axiom Space recently launched its fourth private crew to the International Space Station. AX4 lifted off from Florida in a SpaceX Dragon capsule on June 25th and is currently completing a two-week tour on the ISS. The mission was sponsored by three countries, India, Poland, and Turkey, which each sent an astronaut, along with Axiom's Peggy Woodson, a former NASA astronaut herself, as commander. CEO Tej Palbathia says the business model is about creating access. Think of it as a space program, a space agency in a box, a space operating system for countries, corporations and civilizations. How do we do everything that we've learned over the last 60 years and condense it into a six-month to a year-long process for a country that has never had an astronaut on the ISS

or in some of our cases ever in space like Turkey? And you mentioned India, which has a very accelerated, aggressive, and ambitious space program. Bhatia, a serial entrepreneur and space investor, became CEO just over two months ago. And the timing is critical. In addition to, quote, precursor missions, the eight-year-old startup is developing its own commercial space station and designing lunar spacesuits with Prada for NASA. There is a lot of venture capital out there for businesses like this, but the long-term play here and the scale that we're going for, we're not going for a unicorn or dekakorn

type of outcome. We're looking to be the next Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Metta, NVIDIA. These companies that 30 years ago didn't exist were high tech venture backed companies. And then now these are names that we can't even imagine the world without. And that is the destiny that Axiom has chosen. On this episode, Axiom's Tej Bhatia on the AX4 mission, how the space economy is evolving,

and on whether Axiom Space has any plans to go public. I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. Axiom Space is an eight-year-old startup. We were created to build the successor to the International Space Station. We have the exclusive contract to dock our modules onto the station in a couple of years, and basically build our platform

before the end of life of the ISS, which will be coming down in a few years. And these missions, the AX-1 through 4 missions, we call them our precursor missions, because we're going to the International Space Station, not to Axiom Segment yet. And these missions represent a partnership with NASA, the European Space Agency, several countries around the world, SpaceX, and it shows that a small startup

with the desire and the will to create access for the entire world can literally create diplomatic movements that were not possible even five years ago. And for example, on the AX-4 mission, you've got four countries going to space. You got the United States, India, Poland, and Hungary. And for India, Poland, and Hungary, this is all their first ever astronaut and citizen to the International Space Station. Even more coincidental

and interesting, and I get goosebumps every time I say it, I'm actually getting them now, is for each of these countries this is their second astronaut ever, all 40 years later. So we call this the return to space mission. And when you see this crew, when you saw them pass through the hatch onto the ISS, when you saw the smiles on their faces, I could only imagine the billions of girls and boys around the world that had a defining moment in their life that will set them on a path of engineering, entrepreneurship, exploration, and it's literally going to fundamentally change the world. Yeah. And when we talk about India, Poland, and Hungary, we're talking about literally astronauts

that are being sponsored by their own governments because they either don't have their own spaceflight program or in the case of India, they're working on one, but they're not there yet. Yes, it's a very good point. So Axiom's fourth mission is an all-national mission, three different governments as our customers. Our third mission was also an all-national mission. On that one you had Italy, Sweden, and Turkey. So that one we called the All European Mission. The second one was with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And our first mission was with private individuals from three different nations. So what we're doing with these missions is creating access. Think of it as a space program, a space agency in a box, a space operating system for countries, corporations and civilizations. How do we do everything that we've

learned over the last 60 years, and condense it into a six month to a year long process for a country that has never had an astronaut on the ISS or in some of our cases ever in space like Turkey. And you mentioned India, which has a very accelerated, aggressive and ambitious space program with their launch vehicles, their landing on the moon, what they're trying to build with their human spaceflight program, their space station program. And the AX-4 mission represents a very large partnership between the United States and India, the government of India and the White House, NASA and ISRO and Axiom and the government of India and their entire space and industrial ecosystem. And it's really a sign of things to come. industrial ecosystem. And it's really a sign of things to come,

you know, for us as a species for humanity, for us to get off planet, no single country or company can do it on its own. This is a market marketplace of capabilities that must be combined must be transparent, must be cooperative and collaborative at a time where that's not so easy in the world right now. And the beauty for me and for Axiom Space is it all naturally fits together in this capabilities marketplace, in this offering of access

that has never been available before. And it all ties into a really great venture capital business model that allows a startup like ours that's eight years old to have sent now four missions, 16 astronauts, 12 nations. And just to have sent now four missions, 16 astronauts, 12 nations. And just to be very clear when I say startup, yes, we are startup in every sense. But unlike other startups, we brought in billions in revenue over the last several

years. You know, as an eight year old startup, we're doing more business, top line business than most large companies do. So it just goes to show you the inflection point that's about to come on what people might say is the final frontier, but it's definitely the next frontier. Oh, you just said so much I want to dig into, including the billions of revenue. But before we get there, this idea that basically we're using commercial space in this particular case Axiom, and then, you know, it's your point partnership with SpaceX to actually do the launch, use the Dragon capsule, it's democratizing access. So when you talk about this being the fourth

of four precursor missions, what does the backlog look like for future missions and what does the cadence look like to conduct them? It's a great question. And it's literally the crux of our thesis and this inflection point. So I joined Axiom just under four years ago, I became CEO actually exactly 60 days ago today is day

60. But I personally found out about the company a little over five years and made an investment in the company, an angel investment in their series A. And my reason for putting my own money in I was working at Google at the time, and I'm an entrepreneur, I've had three companies of my own, all investor backed with various exits. And when I saw what the company had done by getting this exclusive contract,

the only company in the world that can attach to the ISS and effectively transfer its value, 25 years of value, $150 billion, the largest product ever built by humanity. And these 15 member nations putting four to five billion every year. It is a lab and a piece of equipment that will come down. It was designed with a shelf life. So when I saw that Axiom space had this ultimate beachhead or pole position, I said, okay, there is a real venture play here. And the first part of that is proving that there's demand for a commercial platform.

And not just demand, but outsized demand. Does demand outstrip the supply? Look, if all 15 member countries use our commercial platform, that's a wonderful business. It's a great business. And like I said, already larger than most businesses, but what we're really here for is that internet moment, that iPhone moment, that AI moment, that way we see generations of entrepreneurs

develop from there. So to your question about backlog, it was a hypothesis that we could even sell these four missions. So Axiom had secured all four missions, also the only company to have sent four commercial missions to the ISS, really the only company to have sent commercial missions to the ISS. And our first step was to sell out those missions. And when I was hired as chief

revenue officer four years ago, my mandate was within three years get to a point where we're selling out three years in advance. So we've sold out the four missions, we've actually sold out the next four. So we could send a mission up every month, if we had the supply. And this was the second part of your questions, the cadence, the cadence on the first four missions was dependent on ISS scheduling and launch vehicle availability. We know that launch vehicle availability is getting now

almost to a daily cadence. Now it's not sending humans every day, but we know the technology gets there and the cost has come to a place where it's very feasible. We also know on the demand side that we have more demand than we, just Axiom. So you can imagine what the desire and the demand is from the entire world to do these missions and to start putting out outposts in low Earth orbit.

So the critical piece missing now is the infrastructure, the station, the ability to continue having presence in low Earth orbit and scaling it at the speed of this demand. And that's exactly this moment. That's why from an investment standpoint and growth and scale standpoint, I see 2030 as that moment, that inflection point, the iPhone moment, that moment where the platform is here and the business model is aligned. So really, it's not a question of if humanity gets off planet, it's not a question of if space is the next big sector. If you're an investor right now, you're trying to figure out when that happens. And that's always the hardest part of investing, you could have invested in the Palm Pilot, right? You but if you had gotten into mobile just at the right time, you would have nailed it. You could have invested in AI a long time ago, but if you'd gotten five years ago, you nailed it. We think now is the time for investors and entrepreneurs

to really double down on space. You're speaking like a CEO who is potentially preparing to take this company public. Is that in the cards? We'll see. We're eight years old and it's a very capital intensive business. I keep reiterating that we're a startup because we very much are. My definition of a startup

is a group of people iterating their way to a scalable and repeatable business model and space just isn't there. Now we are generating quite a bit of revenue and we know demand is outstripping supply and we have the mechanisms to scale that supply and it is at a cost level and an order of magnitude that is so much lower than what it used to be for space. It's actually orders of magnitude lower than what it took for us humanity to get the internet, to get the oceans fiber to get the world connected. It's actually a lower order of magnitude of what it takes to operate advanced compute AI data centers and the amount of power they need. So we're definitely

yeah, we're definitely in that same ballpark of high tech unicorn hyperscaler type companies. Now that does require capital and there is a lot of venture capital out there for businesses like this. But the long term play here and the scale that we Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, NVIDIA. These companies that 30 years ago didn't exist were high tech venture backed companies. And then now these are names that we can't even imagine the world without. And that is the destiny that Axiom has chosen. Okay. I want to get into the commercial space station piece of this, but before I do, are these missions that you're currently conducting, are they profitable, and how much does it cost to actually buy a seat or buy into one of them?

Yeah, so what's interesting in terms of, let's say the unit economics. So short answer, yes. We've proven that we can get to a profitable and sustainable business model for human spaceflight through these four missions. And the business on its own could continue as is. But really the way we see this is the development of a platform for tapping in and locking into latent demand, so much demand that the value is not just tied to what it costs to send a person or a thing up. And then you add a little margin and I'll answer your question directly on what it costs. But really what we're looking for is cost of acquisition of a customer and the lifetime value of the customer. So if we look at it that way, it's a very different model than how space has evolved. In 1969, the business model, if you can even call it a business model, because it was all government

delivered, was based on the cost of sending a kilogram up to space. And that's become the metric. And we've seen that cost come down significantly. Companies like SpaceX has reduced the bar, so many startups can go up and put their stuff in there. But it's still based on this concept of cost and margin. Where on the internet, in cloud and AI, it's actually very different. It is costly for you and I to be streaming this across

You're in New York. I'm in Europe right now. That's crazy expensive, but we all think it's free We all think the internet is free. In fact, I call it negative free if you're a startup right now and you want to build your app Google Microsoft Amazon will all pay you a hundred thousand dollars To build your app on their platform. Because they know if you build the next Spotify, if you build the next Netflix, if you build the next Robinhood, that cloud bill is going to go up and it's a win-win for both sides, but these cloud platforms are going to make a lot of money.

Same is true for AI. So I think space has to get to a point where it's not about cost as the metric, but value as the metric. So to answer your question about what it costs, our missions are broken into four seats. There's the commander, which by US law and regulation right now has to be a previously flown US NASA astronaut. And therefore they have to be an AXEM employee. So our we are extremely fortunate. We have Dr. Peggy Whitson, who's on the ISS right now, a true American hero and no better commander for this mission.

She also flew on our second mission. We have Michael Lopez-Alegria, who flew on our first and third mission. So that's our seat. The pilot seat, which is what India has taken, that's around $70 million. And the mission specialist seat is about $65 million. So you can do the math on what the per seat costs

or the fully sold out chartered flight would cost the customers. Now again, that's, you can consider that cost of acquisition, but then what's the lifetime value for Poland? What's the lifetime value for Poland? What's the lifetime value for Hungary? What's the lifetime value for India? And I'm smiling because, you know, I graduated college in 2000. I feel like I just tasted the dot-com boom and definitely viscerally felt the bust.

But when we look at these models, when we look at how, you know, look at cost of acquisition and lifetime value, these are things we can see that scale. And I'm smiling because of the intangible lifetime value of billions, literally billions of boys and girls, lives transforming now, but then also the industrial impact it has all the companies that have been across all our four missions, hundreds of companies. On this mission alone, we have Pernod Ricard, GH Mom is a champagne company that's on there. We've worked with Amazon, AWS on all our missions. Omega is a partner of ours. Aura, the Aura Ring and other wearables

have been on our missions. And I can go on and on. It's really a special time. You mentioned it earlier, this idea of civilizations, corporations. And so I was going to ask you what the opportunity here for missions like this and going to, whether it's the International Space Station right now

or in the future, a commercial space station, why that would be such a valuable proposition to corporations? Yeah, so let me start it just on a basic unit, humans, right? And when we, the collective we, humanity, started thinking about sending the first human off the planet, it was two nations. It was a Cold War.

It was a space race. And it was a race to get one person off the planet. In the 60 years that followed, we, the collective we, humanity has averaged about seven or eight astronauts per year that have gone up. In the last six years we've averaged 22 astronauts per year. And in fact the vehicle size has gone down, the shuttle could take eight people at a time. Our AX4 Dragon SpaceX vehicle carries four. So if you look at the average going up to 22 a year, and Axiom alone as a startup has

sent 16 of those people in the last three years, it just shows you based on the current supply we have, which is constrained, that there is far more demand. We can keep doing this and the number can keep going up. Now imagine a world which really isn't that far away where a vehicle can carry 70 people or 100 people. In one flight, we've quadrupled the average that has been going on. You know, we've 10x the average from previous decades. Where are they all going to go? You know, we can we can we can debate why they should go. We can look at business models and analogies for terrestrial models. But the simple fact, if you believe people are going to space, where are they going to go? So that's the baseline for why commercial space and I'll draw another analogy to the railroads. When we went west, and by this time, we are in the United States, we went west, our manifest destiny,

to get to California, whether the gold rush was really the gold or the belief of the gold, as the railroads went, as the financing partners came in, as the telegraph went along with it, as Levi Strauss built clothes, as other companies at picks and shovels, as other companies built bars and brothels, because when people were going out and if they hit gold and they struck riches, they would go out and party and buy things. And if they didn't, they would go out and party and maybe not buy things.

But that's how economies build. That's how economies grow. So this is railroads going up and that is California up there. And there's limited real estate. And I know that sounds crazy because space is infinite, but space is not infinitely habitable. So when we build our module, when we attach, we have some really prime real estate

our module when we attach, we have some really prime real estate that we can develop many different platforms, many different ways to monetize and scale and benefit humanity down here while also expanding out there. So how will this work? Because you do have this exclusive contract to dock your modules on the International Space Station. We know that's going to get retired probably here in 2030 and been brought down. So what will your space station your modules on the International Space Station. We know that's going to get retired probably here in 2030 and been brought down. So what will your space station entail and how do you compete against some of the other companies that are also working on space stations? Yeah, so you know we've always known the ISS is coming down, right? It was literally designed that way and Congress has

extended it, which you know we're grateful for. And that timeline has, you know, extended a few years now, I think we're talking about 2031. Axiom has always been designed and developed as a company to connect to the ISS, we must connect and that must is much larger than just Axiom. That is for the United States. And that's for the West. Remember, the Chinese have a station up. They have a manned station since 2022. So you'll hear rhetoric that we must, you know, have maintain our presence in low Earth orbit.

That literally means the United States must maintain its presence in low Earth orbit because other countries are signing up for going up with the Chinese, staying with the Chinese. So if you think about the number of countries, and I'm just talking about human spaceflight, but our contracts go far beyond human spaceflight. We are talking in the orders of billions, if not tens of billions within specific countries of the amount of business they're going to do up in space for their governments and for their industries. So our

roadmap here is to connect our module in 2027, giving enough time to transfer the value from the ISS and make sure it is safely deorbited whenever that happens. And in that time, we are building our subsequent modules. The first several are actually being built right now in Italy, in the north of Italy by our partner, Talisilenia. And we have a gigantic supply chain, global supply chain. Also, you know, majority in the US were Houston, Texas based. But we're seeing with each country that comes into this marketplace, they bring their industrial supply chain. And in many cases, that's not a space supply chain. You know, another area that Axiom has a sole opportunity is with spacesuits. The next human that steps on the moon will be wearing an Axiom spacesuit. Through our business and our relationship

with Italy, we have brought in Prada as I'll start at the lowest level or the most unseen level to the public as a strategic investor in Axiom. They're an engineering partner on the suit through their advanced materials department. They're helping us with the carbon fiber materials, the stitching on the suit itself, and then they're an amazing marketing collaboration partner. So this one have even been possible and I can go down the line with food and beverage, automotive, apparel, high tech, and this is just a roadmap, a template for how this will work across the world. What is the update on the development of these suits? Are they going to be ready in time, assuming America's ready in time for this Artemis human mission? Yeah, I think the long call in the tent is,

will America be ready for this? And yes, we will be ready. Axiom Space will be ready. And yes, America will be ready. Obviously, I can't speak for the United States, but as a born and bred American and very proud of our country and very proud of my company, yes, we will be ready. We must be ready.

I'm not going to make a prediction on timeline, but yeah, it's in the roadmap. And it's going to be a glorious couple of years ahead. Has it been challenging to deal with a NASA that has been from a leadership standpoint a little bit rudderless? That's that's a very good point and very astute You know rudderless for sure. I think part of the challenge also is in a transition period like this being leaderless is complicated and I'll speak about the low-ear Earth orbit economy and space and human spaceflight,

but this is probably true for the world itself is there's a vacuum of leadership right now. And you're seeing a few people around the world step up into that position, and I think space will be no different. And with NASA, whether it's rudderless or leaderless, there's still an extremely important partner and leader for space and for Axiom. So what we believe is happening while on the surface it looks challenging and budgets are being cut or shifted, this is reinforcing the international cooperation, you know, with NASA at a core central position for that.

And I also just think about it. If it weren't for NASA, companies like SpaceX and Axiom couldn't exist. And there will be more. But if you look at the value creation just from the startup and the business world that SpaceX and Axiom are doing, there's a need for this. And NASA enabled it and continues to enable it.

This isn't just commercialization like that. This is a private partner, public private partnership, like we've never seen in humanity. And I think what all this entails is that leadership vacuum is being filled and it's being filled with a lot of enterprise value and equity value mindset, which we as Americans are known for, and literally is the best product

that we both import and export out to the world. Hmm, and you see it playing out. Investors do seem to understand it, both in the public markets and the private markets right now. It's a key part of the story. Tej Bhatia of Axiom Space, thank you so much for joining me. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts and by watching

our coverage on Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.