Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Space-Based Solar Power with Aetherflux CEO Baiju Bhatt 2/13/25

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, has set his sights on a new moonshot: space-based solar power. His new venture, Aetherflux, looks to hone solar power through a constellation of satellites—where each payload will transmit power to ground stations via infrared lasers. He joins Morgan Brennan to discuss his transition from financial technology to space, his vision for the technology, and what it could mean for surging energy demand on earth.

Beju Bhatt is best known for co-founding Robinhood, the online trading platform he helped lead until last year, stepping away from the day-to-day operations. Now, Bhatt is busy working on another moonshot, one that's even more ambitious. I had this passion for commercial space, and in particular, what was possible with space if access to orbit was really there? I was drawn towards the idea of space solar power, which is what Aetherflux is, coming back to the question that you actually asked. And I think the thesis behind this was always like, what are distinct commercial opportunities from what people are doing in space right now

that could be unlocked in a world where commercial access to space is much more broad. Enter Atherflux. Unveiled last October, it is bot's big bet on revolutionizing the power grid from space. The concept, or at least some version of it, has existed for decades, but no one has been able to pull it off, at least not yet. So the idea was you would build one monolithic array in space, which would collect power and then beam it down to the ground with microwaves. This was the old NASA idea from the 1970s. Very cool idea.

Hasn't happened. Our approach is a little bit different. And instead of building one monolithic array in orbit, our approach is to say, hey, if you wanted to take this concept and try to make it happen in 2025, what are the underlying component technologies that could make this possible? And kind of ask the question, like, what is the version of this that could exist today? And our answer to that is building a constellation of smaller satellites flying in a much lower orbit, where each satellite, when it gets to space, acts as basically a mini solar farm. So it will collect sunlight and, as it's passing over ground stations,

actually transmit the power down to the ground to use, and the method of power transmission is using infrared lasers. Atherflux is working on demonstrations this year, with a goal of testing the tech from space as soon as 2026. On this episode, Atherflux's Beju Bhatt discusses the vision and the tech, the transition from financial services, and what being successful could mean for cracking the power problem on Earth. I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. Joining me now, Beju Bhatt. He is the founder and CEO of Aetherflux and the co-founder of Robinhood. It is so great to have you on the podcast. Welcome, Beju.

Thanks so much for having me on. Pretty stoked to be here. Aetherflux. What are we talking about here? You've gone from, you've gone from, uh, trading and financial markets to space. Why? Yeah. Uh, so it's, I'll tell you the story behind how, how I got here. Um, apologies in advance if there's some, some noise in the background. but sorry are we are we still on okay yeah they're right um the the story behind the company starts actually kind of a long time ago and the motivation for it starts from back when i was a kid um my family uh moved to the u.s from india it's gonna go a little back, because my dad had always wanted to study physics in the United States and had this dream of studying physics in America. So, you know, he

dedicated his whole life to it. And right before I was born, my family moved to the United States. So he studied physics at the University of Huntsville, Alabama. Then through my childhood, he worked at NASA Langley after his graduate work. And so I grew up around the NASA sort of like world. I remember like driving to see my dad at his office and there were these big, you know, wind tunnels and just like the sort of love of the scientific world and seeing it in such a visually real way. I wanted to follow my dad's footsteps and study physics. My dad was very adamant about saying, you know, if you want to do that, you kind of have to figure that out yourself, which is, I think, a pretty easy way of convincing somebody to do something is like,

you got to figure it out yourself. It's like, oh, I'm definitely going to do that. Study physics at Stanford, which is where I met Vlad. We wanted to go and start Robinhood together. And I had this dream where if, you know, if we had, if we, if we did the things that we wanted to do in finance, that this sort of like calling of the space industry and in particular, the sort of wave of commercialization of space that was happening, it It had been this thing that had kind of captured my imagination from the beginning, because I think for my generation of people, it kind of felt like the space industry in a lot of ways that happened before I was born, right? Humanity had done all these amazing things, Saturn V, and then we were kind of in a lull. And so

I had this passion for commercial space and in particular what was possible with space if if access to orbit was really there i was drawn towards the idea of space solar power which is what aetherflux is um coming back to the question that you actually asked um and i think the thesis behind this was always like, what are distinct commercial opportunities from what people are doing in space right now that could be unlocked in a world where commercial access to space is much more broad? this old NASA Department of Energy idea from the 1970s, where you could collect solar power in orbit, and there'd be a lot of sort of interesting benefits from that. One of the big ones is the idea of, like, how can you make solar power available at nighttime, or how can you make solar power available at times

when the sun is not traditionally providing sunlight? And so the idea in the 1970s was you'd build, solar power available at times when the sun is not traditionally providing sunlight. And so the idea in the 1970s was you build, can you hear that in the background? Yes. Yeah. That's okay. You keep talking and then I'm going to ask you what that noise has, you know, what that noise says about where you're joining me from. Yes.

There's electrical being put in right now. So the idea was you would build one monolithic array in space, which would collect power and then beam it down to the ground with microwaves. This was the old NASA idea from the 1970s. Very cool idea. Hasn't happened. Our approach is a little bit different. And instead of building one monolithic array in orbit,

our approach is to say, Hey, if you wanted to take this concept and try to make it happen in 2025, what are the underlying component technologies that could make this possible? And kind of ask the question, like, what is the version of this that could exist today? that is building a constellation of smaller satellites flying in a much lower orbit where each satellite when it gets to space acts as basically a mini solar farm so it will collect sunlight and as it's passing over ground stations actually transmit the power down to the ground to use and the method of power transmission is using infrared lasers. So imagine just beaming light down to a ground station

that you illuminate. And when it gets illuminated, it starts to generate power. Hasn't been done before. We're on a pretty ambitious goal of actually demonstrating this technology, which we're working on right now,

which is kind of what this, the noise in the background is at the very least. And so we're hoping to do that in early 26 to actually have a first piece of hardware in space. That's going to be able to transmit power. And, you know, the,

the ambitions for this in the future are pretty lofty, but at first we want to start by, you know, seeing if we can power some electronics on the ground from space, like light up a light bulb from space. Very, very cool. And you just said it because there is this background noise. And I just, for our viewers and our listeners, I just want to sort of paint the picture of the fact that you're literally sitting in a new office in which you just said electrical is being installed. This is a new startup, a concept you've had for a while, but a new startup.

You have this super cool mural behind you, which I'll let you describe. But it really speaks to the fact that you are in this space hardware game, and this is very much a new company. Very much so. I built Robinhood over the first half of my adult life, and I'd had this passion for wanting to build real world physical things as well, right? I think it's kind of a natural, like, you can make stuff happen digitally. Like, what is the skill set? Like, what is the process of making these things happen in the physical world. And doing it in space, I guess, probably a pretty challenging place to do it. But, you know, I'm sort of of the opinion that these sort of broad ideas, these really bold, ambitious ideas, somebody's got to try them,

right? And that's kind of how society and innovation gets pushed forward is people take these ideas that seem like they're too complicated, too technically challenging. And to say, hey, let's put one foot in front of the other and ask the question, how do we make this thing real with technology that exists today? Well, you made another point, and I'm assuming you're a millennial like me. We had the shuttle program growing up up and then that sort of lost its fizzle or at least wasn't quite as exciting then it went away then we lost the ability to to launch people um from u.s soil to space and and you basically saw this uh winter if you will in terms of u.s space exploration and innovation and now what's happened is in large part because of

spacex but others have also followed suit is is you've had this commercial space renaissance sweep in and enable all of these doors that previously nobody even thought there was an outline for, let alone a doorknob. And I think this is where you kind of see with the imagery in the background and the name of the company is the starting point was actually asking the question, are there ideas that people thought of in the 1960s, 1970s, where the motivation behind the idea was like well formulated, well thought out, but maybe wasn't possible at the time? Like, are any of those ideas possible in the Starship era, right, with the level of computing that's been developed? this when you take a look at what we're building through that lens it's actually pretty eye-opening because you realize that when this idea was first sort of conceived in the 1970s um like photovoltaic technology was in its infancy right like the first laser was operated in i want to say the late 1950s or 1960s like these technologies were technologies were, like, a decade,

two decades old, where when we look at where these component technologies are today, it's a very different story, right? Because fiber optic communications, for example, the infrared lasers are the backbone of that, right? We look at the proliferation of photovoltaic technology, the cost efficiencies that have happened there. And you just realize that the landscape of this problem today, very different than it was when people were like, hey, this is an interesting idea. What what would it take to make it happen? There's there's different ways of doing it today. And we think it's possible. And I I would imagine that this is a very unique moment for a product like this, assuming you can get it off the ground and especially as ambitiously as

your timeline would suggest, which I want to get to in a second. But we also are seeing the exponential surge in need for power as well, intersecting with the issue of national security and more talk of things like, for example, decentralized power sources, and then obviously climate and, you know, etc, etc. So, so I wonder how you see this market opportunity, because it's a space company. But also, I would imagine there are quite a few companies and governments that would potentially be standing in line looking to become customers if you pull this off. Yeah, I mean, I think the possibility of being able to distribute power, you know, that you're able to generate from the sun anywhere on the planet. Like this is like this will have broad applications across the planet. And as an entrepreneur, that's really exciting, right?

That's the kind of company that I'm passionate about building, where if we can pioneer this path forward, it's a completely different use case, right? And the possibilities that it opens up, like, the fun part is figuring that stuff out, right? Like, you don't know all that stuff in the beginning. Yeah, I mean, I think to the point of getting this technology off the ground and demonstrating it for the first time,

I think that's kind of where a lot of our efforts are right now. And to change subject a little bit, as I'm like looking over, I'm seeing people carrying a ladder to drop electrical power into our clean room right now. But I think it's that first inflection point around what our mission is, is to say,

hey, what does it take to do this once? What does it take to demonstrate this capability? And from that demonstration of capability is kind of the jumping off point to say, hey, how do we make this more useful? How do we sort of make this meet sort of specific applications that it's supposed to? But the question of like, how do you do this the first time? Our approach is built on top of using commercially or, you know, pretty close to commercially available components today. So

one of the key components to our demonstration is that it's going to be built on an apex satellite bus so apex space is a company that i'm a small investor in but we're actually kind of using that as the the jumping off point to develop for the first mission you know the the power transmission the pointing mechanism ground station, all the interconnection technology between the two systems, because the way this will work is as the satellite's passing overhead, it'll form a link with the ground station as it's passing overhead. Once it's formed a link, it will continue to send heartbeat signals. That's kind of what our design is as it's passing overhead. And when it sees that it's established a link,

it'll start transmitting power. So the satellites will transmit power as they're passing overhead. And as they move out of the field of view of one ground station, they'll start looking for another ground station to provide power to. So that's kind of how this thing ladders up in the future. But it starts with one satellite.

And is that one satellite poised to launch next year? Or is it pre-testing and pre-demos before that happens next year? We've got a lot of work over the next year of developing the technology, testing it, terrestrial testing, lab testing. Our goal is to do a space test. So working with SpaceX, getting it on one of the transporter missions. We're targeting beginning of 26 for that. A lot of moving parts there. So, you know, we'll try to make that happen.

Got it. And then I guess just tell me a little bit more about the satellites because you're going to build them. Well, you said you're going to use the Apex bus and because you're going to build them well you said you're going to use the apex bus and then you're going to build off of that so how quickly can you make these satellites um you know one once you've gotten through that first key test and you know you have a product that works i think there's going to be there's going to be a significant amount of testing that gets there and i think also it's the process of developing that that's going to give us a lot of the know-how to do it so the way that we kind of think about it is like how do you sequence this up and kind of how do you think about the component technologies that we want to kind of incrementally develop um so i think the answer to your question is we've got a little bit of work to do between now and then

and i think the the testing is going to reveal a lot of it. But there's some pretty interesting stuff that we'll get to as we do that, right? So the first one will be demonstrate power on the ground. That's kind of what the objective is. And then, you know, from that, you'll see, say, hey, what are some technical challenges potentially as we go to higher power, right? Or what are some technical challenges as we go to different receiver architectures, for example. But I think you'll see some iteration from us on these demo missions.

And as the design starts to crisp enough, we'll be able to say, hey, we could make X number of these for this use case. And then actually get into the manufacturing of like, this is what a first constellation looks like. So you don't actually know what that first constellation or how large it's going to be, what it's actually going to look like yet.

So we're developing a lot of that stuff right now. And I think it also has to do with what the specific job it's trying to do is, right? So is it trying to develop power to a specific place or is it more certain times of day or different geographies? There's a construction work happening literally right there. It's just becoming part of the ambient noise as we have this conversation. So then I guess, are you already, you're very focused on the tech.

But do you already have like a longer term vision in your head about what you know your marketing campaign is going to look like and and who you're looking to sign on as customers at least initially then like would you be like talking to utility companies or would it be something else we've been spending a decent bit of time over um over this past year with folks out of DARPA and folks within the DoD, military applications, we think that's probably going to be a natural fit for this technology in its early stages because you think about what this does first,

and there's some, I think, broad strokes analogies to how Starlink works, where it's developing this technology to deliver the service to places where it's developing this technology to develop, to deliver the service, sorry, to places that it's hard to reach, right? So like getting internet out on a backpacking trip versus in our case, it's like,

where are the situations where getting power to a contested environment is very difficult to do? So think like forward deployed military bases on the dod side or also things like remote mining applications where the thing we want to do is actually say if you install the receiver that we develop um at this sort of like difficult to reach facility that that's actually kind of a natural use case for, you know, you can get power there with like no connecting infrastructure. So no fuel transit, no power lines out from a different location in a power grid. So that's kind of going to be the first thing that we do is can we make this useful in these military contexts

or in these sort of more esoteric contexts where we start to mature the technology. And from that, the jumping off point is going to be like, hey, how can we make this a commercial application? How can we make this so that can power everything from day to day usage of sort of grid scale power in our day to day lives all the way through to industrial applications where we know that there's a lot of use for energy. Makes a lot of sense. How much power are we talking about? Where do you want to get to in terms of the amount of power you're able to generate from the sun and then being back down to earth? It's an interesting question, right? Because like one of the interesting things about solar power in general is you kind of have as much of it as you want, right? Because the sun is producing more power than anything that we do on Earth.

And so the way that we kind of think about this, right, is like if we fast forward the clock, you know, 10, 20 years into the future, like I think the world is going to be one where we actually generate a significant amount of power in space because you're not using real estate on the ground to do it right like you have space is very big and as you get to sort of imagine a world where there's concentric orbits of these satellites that are generating power You can even imagine a world where like there's a power grid in space that's powering life on Earth, right? Where there's like a persistent number of these satellites flying overhead that are continuously serving power to ground applications. So, I mean, I guess the answer to that question is

you can put a lot of solar panels in space. You're only as limited as your hardware. Yeah. So lasers. What are the risks? What are the challenges of doing this with a laser? Yeah. So the thing that we're doing for the first demonstration is, like I said, trying to ask the question, where is the laser technology today that can generate power output that we're looking for?

And so what we've done is we've looked at a lot of the specs from things that the DoD has done, looked at sort of where the directed energy community is. And for the first demonstration, the goal is to be able to, you know, put down low single digit, like a kilowatt of power of operation with a satellite and the the point of this is to kind of like do a demonstration of the technology where we feel like it's in the power transmission realm as opposed to the telecommunications realm um and to do that you know in a way that takes safety kind of at one of its primitive goals of doing one of the sort of foundational elements of what we do. So safety is going to be

something that's designed into the system from the beginning. Like I said, there's going to be a link between the satellite and the ground station when it's transmitting power, right? So the satellite will actually be heart beating to the ground station to show that it's a, there's a direct link between the two as it's passing overhead. And then the goal is to actually just mature the technology and to be able to demonstrate the safety mechanisms operating and being functional. And again, DARPA and DOD have demonstrated this stuff in the past in sort of, I think the demonstration that was,

that sort of comes to mind is they did a big power demonstration in 2019 where they actually showed that you can do this stuff with safety interlocks. So the short answer is, is like, there's going to be a, there's going to be a lot of technology that actually makes it so that the satellite and the ground stations are locked with one another. And we're going to continue to iterate on that technology. And you say you're already talking to DOD and DARPA and some of these entities to get this up and running. Yep.

It's been super helpful and collaborative and you know as we kind of think about like where we want to do the demonstrations and how we want to sort of bring the technology to life working in these contexts i think is kind of a natural application and the pattern i think also is like you've seen that with things like gps right where that was originally something that was developed with sort of these military use cases in mind. And like, now it's like a critical part of our day-to-day lives. So that's kind of the, it's kind of the path that we're taking there. Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. And I mean, I have a lot of these conversations with companies

that are essentially dual use technology companies, and you can do a lot with the government in this capacity and sort of help test and innovate on the tech and then expand it out. So I'm curious because as somebody who already has this legacy, you've already started one wildly successful company in a different sector, in a different industry to now be back at a startup that you're building and building from scratch again. Yeah. I just wonder what your previous experience, you know, what, what you bring to the table this time around and what it's been like to meet with, for example, investors and government officials,

you know, et cetera, and, and have these conversations and be like, okay, now space energy from space, are you on board? Oh, man. Yeah. I think that question kind of hits the nail on the head. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? I think it's fundamentally, the answer to that question has got a lot to do with who I am as a person. Like I like building things, right? And I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction seeing something go from like idea to thing in the world. Right. And do I wish there was another version of me that existed that I could just like not have to want to build stuff all the time? It probably would be a little bit easier. But it's like, it's kind of the, it's kind of the

thing that makes me tick. It's like getting an idea that seems really, really difficult, chipping away at it, chipping away at it, chipping away at it. And the sort of personal thing, right, of like being like, okay, I want to get better at these things. I want to understand how this works deeper. There's no amount of success that can kind of take that out of you right um because i just like to do that kind of stuff and this time around it's like the challenge for me is is like i think with with robin hood one of my big passion areas was like design product design how do you make something that know, kind of is a great consumer product?

Here it's, how do you make something that like survives in this space environment and is able to do this thing that people didn't think was possible? But I think also it's like, how do you do this in a way that it comes to life on earth? Like, how do you make space more useful for people on earth? So this, I will go on a little bit of a tangent because something I feel pretty passionately about, and I think it's kind of something that ties to the, to the Robin Hood chapter of my life, where when, when I started that company with GLAAD, like the, one of the things that was very top of mind was why is it that young people don't want to invest, right? Like, why is this not something that was super common 10, 15 years ago?

And one of the things that we kind of saw was that if you gave people the ability to kind of, like, pursue their own financial betterment, right? When that case was like giving people the ability to invest directly in the stock market, the rate of innovation and the rate of change was really like, it was awesome to watch. And by that, what I mean is, is like, if you fast forward the clock, five, 10 years from when we started that company, there were a lot of kids going to college that were studying things like financial engineering. Like that was a field of study that was feeding into the sort of jobs that were being created there because there was a big commercial opportunity because you know there were big fintech companies that were emerging similarly here like the thought process is i want to live in a world where there are so many cool commercial opportunities in space so that when the next generation of really, really smart students going to college, maybe not even going to college in this next generation, they're like, you know what? I want to study aerospace because there's a lot of good commercial opportunities in space. And like, that's the world that I want to make.

Right. lot of good commercial opportunities in space. And like, that's the world that I want to make, right? Because if the world of space is defense, it's telecommunications, it's earth imaging, it's, you know, research and academic stuff, we need more creativity. We need other stuff to do in space. That's what I'm trying to do. That's awesome. You know, I will say it almost feels like the worlds are colliding too, because I see it from my unique vantage point at CNBC is that some of the stocks that retail investors are most excited about are some of these types are like commercial space stocks and some of these defense tech stocks and some of these companies that are, you know, founder led and innovating and thinking about these new, for lack of a better term, frontier technologies,

and maybe partnering with government to do it. So it does feel like there's almost a figure eight happening. There's an interesting, yeah, emergence of the sort of defense tech ecosystem and space tech ecosystem. But like, at least on the space side it's like starship is still i mean hopefully not too far out but it's still a little ways out i think it's pretty difficult to conceptualize what that thing is going to do and i'll tell you how i think about it in my mind it's like a railroad to space right in my mind it it's like a railroad to space, right? In my mind, it's like we're, and maybe not to the more esoteric orbits in space, but if you just look at like the easy to get to lower orbit sort of orbits in space and Starship as a ride from

the surface of the earth to like 500, 600 kilometers in orbit. What am I trying to say like what if what if we live in a world where getting things to orbit is not that different than getting it across the surface of the earth like what if getting something to orbit is not that different than flying it from Asia to the United States. Like if you think about it like that, then you might ask the question, why are we building solar farms on earth? Right. And you kind of ask these questions of like, what are ways of thinking about using space for commerce that have previously just been sort of limited out of thinking?

I think that's, that's what, that's the kind of innovation that Starship is going to been sort of limited out of thinking um i think that's that's what that's the kind of innovation that starship is gonna hopefully sort of spark the thinking of in people's minds final question for you so now that you are in the space game are you consulting your dad about it or is he still telling you to figure it out on your own oh man my dad is loving this My dad is loving this. My dad is loving this. And, uh, shout out to my dad. If he's listening to this podcast, which, um, no, my dad, my dad is, my dad is like, look, I've been doing, he's like, I'm like doing some tinkering on the side. I'm like thinking about this. I'm like working on some, you know, some math problems for you.

I mean, it's just, it's super fun to be able to engage with my dad on stuff like this. And also I have little boys at home too. So it's fun seeing them see their dad building space stuff, right? Like that's, that's something that I want them to be really proud of me for doing. I don't want them to be like, Oh yeah, you know, dad did this Robin Hood thing a long time ago.

Like, no, he was doing stuff through their entire childhood. Family and that stuff is super important to me. So I've got to stay true to it. Well said. Well, Beju Bhatt of Aetherflux, thank you so much for joining me. It's really great to speak with you. Thanks so much. It was a fun conversation. That does it for this episode of Manetherflux. Thank you so much for joining me. It's really great to speak with you. Thanks so much. It was a fun conversation.

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.