Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Building the Future: Reindustrializing America from Earth to Orbit with CesiumAstro CEO Shey Sabripour and Trousdale Ventures’ Phillip Sarofim 10/17/25

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

At the UP.Summit in Bentonville, AR, Morgan Brennan speaks with CesiumAstro CEO Shey Sabripour and Trousdale Ventures founder Philip Sarofim about driving next-generation industrialization, advanced connectivity, dual-use innovation, and how hard tech is reshaping both defense and commercial markets—on Earth and in space. Plus, CesiumAstro just secured eight SpaceX rideshare missions starting in 2026, a major leap that will fast-track validation of its next-gen space communications technology and what it all means for the new space race. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cesium Astro has been making big strides in space-based communications. The startup specializes in phased array technology. It's developed this next-gen connectivity capability and has been building satellites in-house to deploy it. The core technology of Cesium Astro is advanced telecommunication using a limited resource, which is called the radio spectrum, the same that we use in radio and TV. And this spectrum is a natural resource. There's only so much of it and how we use it matter.

And as we have all these platforms and now introducing humanoid robots and advanced robotics and all these other technologies, we're still going to use the same radio waves. And so our core technology allows you to better use that limited resource. Sizia Mastro's founder and CEO, Shea Sabrapoor, says customers include governments, as well as a growing list of companies like Airbus. us and Honeywell. Investment firm Truesdale Ventures led Seizia Mastro's Series B-plus funding round. Founding partner and CEO Philip Serafim says connectivity is a crucial piece of the massive AI infrastructure buildout happening across the globe. I think it's one of the most critical

elements of infrastructure, and I think the future of technology looks like infrastructure. I think what she is providing is the ability for all of these technologies to emerge in the world and be industrialized. We need advanced connectivity, advanced telecommunication. You can have autonomous vehicles or humanoid robots without the next level shift in communication. On this episode, joining me from the recent Ups Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas, Sizium Astros, Shea Sabrepoor, and Truesdale Ventures, Phillips Seraphim, on how infrastructure and space will help power the AI and autonomy revolution here on Earth.

I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. Joining me here at the Ups Summit, Shea Sabrepoor of Sizio Mastro and Philip Seraphim of Truesdale Ventures, it's great to speak with both of you today. Thank you so much for having us, Morgan. So first, I think let's just start a little bit with where we are and why this event is so significant, and Philip would love to start with you with that.

I think the Upsummit is an amazing place. for collaborators to come together. You have government leaders, you have innovators, you have investors who are helping to re-industrialize America, advance humanity, advance technology, and you have the greatest players in the hard tech here showing you what they can do and what is so great about this country.

Yeah, and I think what's fascinating about it is we talk about these innovations, but they're on display here. That's like the future, here essentially. It is. The future is here and it's it's up to us to help make sure that that you know there's a great roadmap and path to industrialize it. So what does that mean for Cesium Astro? Well at Cesium Astro we are helping the next generation telecommunication and telecommunication is part of everything and this conference is all about mobility. It's all about

transportation. It's all about the defense and dual-use technologies. And if you look at every one of these vehicles, every one of these platforms, telecommunication, advanced telecommunication is at the heart of it. And we all need it. We're all mobile generation now. We want all of our data and technology at our fingertips and connectivity, everything. And that's what Cesium Astro does, advanced connectivity for everybody anywhere in the world. I know you and I've had these conversations before, but just to back up and sort of give that background, what is Cesium Astro specifically doing to enable that connectivity? The core technology of Cesium Astro is advanced telecommunication using a limited resource,

which is called the radio spectrum, the same that we use in radio and TV. And this spectrum is a natural resource. There's only so much of it and how we use it matter. And as we have all these platforms are now introducing humanoid robots and advanced robotics and all these other technologies, we're still going to use the same radio waves. And so our core technology allows you to better use that limited resource much better because we all have just insatiable appetite for more and more data with us at all times. And how do you use this limited resource matters. You know, we've gone from 1G to second generation, third generation cellular technology, now 5G and beyond 6G. And all of this aims to reuse the spectrum, this radio

waves, in a much better way. And that's our core technology is that. Now we're applying it to space, to spacecraft, to aircraft, to defense applications, underground, in everything that we have, including robots of the future. We have some of those here at this event, too, humanoid robots. Trusdale lead investor in Cesium Astro. What drew you to this company? You know, we invest in forever companies, and really it's three things. So Shea and his company display all of them.

It's a forever founder, forever market, and a forever business model. Obviously, nothing is forever. But we want to make sure that we have founders that are in it for the long haul. Mission driven, not financially driven. And in people who are, who eat, live, and breathe everything they do. Shea spent 25 years leading up to founding CCM and studying for what would, you know, become his calling. And he was at Lockheed for over 20 years. He was CTO Firefly.

He has an incredible background, an incredible work ethic. And that's what we like to see. So I think it really all boils down to founder at the end of the day. When you're investing in early stage companies, it's founder first. As far as the business model goes, Che started out with a hardware product with software-like margins. And that's always exciting to an investor. He was providing the picks and shovels to the space industry

in being able to supply components to the Primes, the Lockheets, the Northropes of the world, and then decided to create the element satellite. And another thing we love is founders with an ability to adapt. He had a great business plan being a part supplier. He could have remained a part supplier forever. Now we have a full stack, vertically integrated satellite,

And I think it's important to see the company, a founder, continue to evolve. And we know what Che is doing today. Who knows what he's going to be up to tomorrow? A hardware company with software like margins. How have you pulled that off? Well, I mean, we live in a world now. Traditionally, in aerospace and defense,

we lived in a world where cost plus, because these are hard things and hard missions, really, really hard missions. And we lived in a world of cost-plus contracts and so on. But as we grow, as we have a need for these dual-use applications or warfighters need advanced technology, not 20, 30, 40-year-old technologies, we need it to shift. We need to shift to firm-fix price philosophy,

meaning that when you go to buy an iPhone, you don't negotiate. It's not cost-plus, that's how much it is, that's what you pay for. And so that's the concept that's not prevalent. And so when you build a great product, you test it, you understand your margins, you understand what it costs to build it and what you sell it for to be a business, you can offer it at a firm fixed price. And therefore, it becomes not only affordable to our customers because they pay, they know what they're paying and they know what they're getting. You're not going to go back to them and ask for more money. None of us in consumer world would be good with that, right? if Apple came back and said, I need some more money.

I just didn't make enough money on my iPhone. So that's what we do. We designed, develop products, test them, and then sell them at a firm fixed price, in which case we can set the margins for us to be a successful business. So, as Philip said, an incredible technology

with proper margins to be a profitable business. And of course, dual-use applications as well. So how are you thinking about that defense and government use versus the commercial possibilities here. Yeah, I mean, companies like ours always, we have a system in the U.S. that helps companies in the early stages. Like, I think of a hardware company is always in more of a 10 to 12 year cycle. Our company is no different. It takes really 10 to 12 years to go from an idea to a mass-producible product. The first five years are sort of development of the

core technology, minimum viable products. The next four years is now transition. into manufacturing and expansion. And the last three years is perhaps getting ready for at an IPO or becoming a public company. And that's exactly the track we're on right now. And sorry, repeat the question one more time and then we can do it. Commercial applications. Yeah, I mean, so with our government,

you know, they're always ready for more advanced technology and the defense becomes one of the first users of our advanced technologies. So in the first five years, you win a lot of small business innovative research programs that prove out your technology, gets the technology in the hands of the warfighter in our Department of Defense, and that's always good, non-delude of funds

for a company to grow. And then you get to a point where you have real programs of record. So traditionally, a company like ours is probably 75% defense. Eventually, it becomes 50-50. There's a lot of commercial applications, but we proudly serve our Department of Defense

and National Security programs. We're the critical juncture in our history, and we need to rebuild the defense, not only just a wide-ranging industrial base, but the defense industrial base, going from a period where we had 55 aerospace companies in our country became almost five after an event called Last Supper in 1993.

We need to rebuild that again, and that's what we're doing. So defense heavy right now, but ultimately dual use 50-50. Yeah, it does feel like the defense industrial base and this whole idea of dual-use technologies and it feels like national security is ground zero for this idea of broader re-industrialization. So as an investor, how are you thinking about that? And what does that mean in terms of the types of companies broadly that you're investing in right now? Well, I think that dual-use flywheel is something that is incredible.

And something that we always look for is when you have, you know, defense customer or a government customer, you also want to make sure that you have a commercial customer. When, you know, I look at it like a matrix and on the vertical lines, I look at U.S., and then I look at rest of the world. And cesium has, for every customer it has in the U.S., it has a customer outside of the U.S. It has a government, you know, our greatest customer being the U.S. government here, but we have commercial customers here. We have, we have, the Taiwan's base agency. We have the Japanese base agency, Jaxa. And I think it's important to see that diversification across the customer suite. How do you think about, I guess, more

broadly connectivity? We just talked about it, the defense applications, but also the transportation applications and just, you know, this era of autonomy we find ourselves in. I just think about some of the aircraft that are here, some of the vehicles that are here. humanoid robots, I mean, even this whole idea of AI infrastructure build-out, the link that connectivity provides to be able to realize it. I guess, how are you thinking about that? I think it's one of the most critical elements of infrastructure, and I think the future of technology looks like infrastructure.

I think what she is providing is the ability for all of these technologies to emerge in the world and be industrialized. We need advanced connectivity, advanced telecommunication, You can't have autonomous vehicles or humanoid robots without the next level shift in communication. What are the technologies in general you're most excited about right now? You know, for me, it's about re-industrializing the United States. I love the idea of on-shoring U.S. battery supply.

I love the idea of solving for big ideas like nuclear fusion with companies like Pacific Fusion. Pacific Fusion, our next energy, re-industrializing the U.S. battery manufacturing space, an onshoreing of cell manufacturing. I love Venus Aerospace for solving the hypersonic problem. And I love Shay for advancing telecommunication to such a tremendous, in such a tremendous way, in diversifying the U.S. defense base. What I think is so fascinating, too, is that Sizium Astro has some of this technology on display here. So when we're talking about things like phased array, capabilities, it's like, it sounds very heady, but here at this site, you can actually see what this looks like and some of these different use cases for it.

I guess how to think about some of those partnerships, how to think about how this is going to touch people's everyday lives. Yeah, I mean, the technology that we have developed, as Philip mentioned, applies to every aspect of our world. Satellite connectivity provides an overlay around the world, an instant infrastructure. That's where satellites are really important. And it's not the only technology. I mean, cellular infrastructure is here to stay. But cellular infrastructure is really important in metropolitan. areas. We all enjoy it and we don't think about it because we're in metropolitan areas.

But in fact, just a couple of percent of the land mass of the world is covered by metropolitan areas. The rest of the world, even in the U.S., I live in Austin, Texas. If you go outside of Austin, Texas in about an hour, two hours drive, very spotty connectivity. So you need this technology in our homes, in our cars. You've heard a lot about direct-to-cell phone technologies now. Again, those have a place in our lives so that no matter where we are in the world, we can ensure connectivity. And the technologies that you see here on display are very modular, very scalable and you can put them on a car, the connected car of the future, you can put them on a plane. We all know that finally we're having some improvements in our connectivity

in the airplane. But think about the warfighter as well. Our war fighters who are defending every single day our Western way of life and democracy need advanced technology. They cannot use 40-year-old technology. You think about some of the traditional methods of spacecraft infrastructure where you connect the world that took decades to build and test and finally launch and the chip technologies that went into them. You add a lot up. Sometimes we had assets in orbit that are 40, 50 years old.

We, as consumers, as civilians, like to have a 40-year-old sort of cell phone, like one of those backbones. So we need to advance this. And that's why we've created this technology where it can serve the warfighter on the battlefield to get the data in their hands from the source of the intelligence to where they need to make it actionable. And then in our daily lives. And that's why telecommunication is so essential.

It's kind of like the electricity, you know, electricity goes out, you go to the fridge, you go to the microwave oven, you know, well, I'm going to go to Starbucks. Then it goes to the garage, you can't open the garage door. Well, telecommunications is a thousand times more impactful. If it dies, you can't do anything. No banking, nothing. Even our power grid is disabled. So it's real hardware, real software, and we're deploying it and scaling it.

And finally, Phil, I just want to get your thoughts. thoughts more broadly. There's a lot of capital in both public and private markets right now. You're starting to see some IPO and other M&A activity, exit activity as well. I just want to sort of get your thoughts of the investing landscape, especially as AI, seems to be sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the room. Yes. I mean, to me, I love investing in hard tech, and I love investing in hard tech because it's hard. And, you know, to quote Kennedy, we need to do things because they're hard. And I think right now, the space economy is burgeoning and booming.

You know, maybe not quite at the same level as AI, but one thing we all need to note is that space was largely considered a neutral territory for the last several years, but the space race is back. And it is a contested domain, and I think, you know, we all need to work together as Americans to think about having a diversified American ecosystem of space companies and really look at the emerging crimes who are helping to advance this country and continue to give us the edge.

I think the US is moving fast enough, either on the public or private sides in terms of this space race. Do we need to be moving faster? That's a great question. I think we could always be moving faster. I like to move at hypersonic speeds, but... Jay, what do you think? I think so.

I think we are still the most innovative country in the world, but we need to have a sense of urgency again and step up as General Good Line, the head of Golden Dome for America states all the time that we need every American to step up and rebuild our industrial base. and we're entering a very exciting era, and I am confident that we will maintain our supremacy in space and beyond. Real quick, before we wrap this up, Golden Dome, big applications for Sisi Amastro. Absolutely. Big opportunity.

Absolutely, in every regard. Absolutely. In space and underground. And great news to come. Shea Sabaport and Philip Serapin. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having us. Always a pleasure.

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.