Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Voyager Goes Public with Voyager Technologies CEO Dylan Taylor 6/13/25

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Voyager Technologies, a commercial space and defense technology startup, has gone public. Skyrocketing more than 80% in its first day trading at the New York Stock Exchange, it reflects a milestone for the broader space. Co-founder & CEO Dylan Taylor joins Morgan Brennan from the stock exchange to talk about the new frontier for the company and space economy: Wall Street. 

Six-year-old Voyager Technologies just went public on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock skyrocketed in its debut, surging more than 80 percent in the first day of trading. That's after the size of the offering was expanded and shares priced higher than expected. It's a milestone moment, not just for the startup, but for the commercial space and defense tech sector overall. I think thematically some things have come together. Obviously space infrastructure is a priority as we look to replace the International Space Station for example. And then on the national security and defense side of things, whether it's Golden Dome or other security protocols that we're putting in place as a nation, we play right at the center of that.

And so I think right company at the right time and the right place. On this episode, Dylan Taylor, Voyager Technology CEO, co-founder and chairman on the new frontier for his company and for the new space economy, Wall Street. I'm Morgan Brennan and this is Manifest Space. This is a big moment, not just for Voyager, but also for space and defense tech overall. Upsized offering, oversubscribed, priced higher than the expected range here.

You and I have talked about this goal for years now of going public in a traditional IPO, which is not something we typically see with space companies. Why? Why now? The timing is good. That was feedback from the investors, and I think our order book reflected that in the process. But also, I think, thematically, some things have come together.

Obviously, space infrastructure is a priority, as we look to replace the International Space Station, for example. And then on the national security defense side of things, whether it's Golden Dome or other security protocols that we're putting in place as a nation, we play right at the center of that. And so I think right company at the right time in the right place.

How big is the opportunity for Golden Dome Voyager? We don't know exactly, right? The president's budget request is circa 125 billion, I think. We will play in that in a couple of different ways. Right, the president's budget request is circa $125 billion, I think. We will play in that in a couple of different ways. We have proprietary propulsion technology that factors into smart missile defense. We also have some optical navigation technology that plays. Also some radiation hardened computers that we put on certain smart systems as well.

So there's a few different ways that we can integrate into those systems, but we don't know exactly how big the opportunity is quite yet. Your revenue last year was split between defense and space. Your roots are in commercial space. Folks perhaps know you best for Starlab, which is the commercial space station that you're developing, in part for NASA when ISS is decommissioned.

Lay out the business case for commercial space stations, because just the fact that you're now going to be a publicly traded company and this is a key future business for you, I don't think people fully understand the business opportunities here. It's enormous. So if you just look at the ISS spent today, it's around $5 billion, maybe a little bit more. That includes NASA, but also other partners like European Space Agency, Japanese Space

Agency and others. So if you just take that cost base and invert it, that becomes the commercial revenue opportunity. And that's just for the base case. So if you look at all the other opportunities you could do in microgravity, biofarm research for example, space manufacturing, data centers in space, all of that. And you and I have talked in the past about SpaceX. I remember a conversation where we talked about launch demand. And we said, well, SpaceX is going to launch all the payloads to space in two months of the year. And the other 10 months of the year,

they're going to be, you know, time on their hands. And of course, that's not what happened because it didn't address demand, it created demand. Commercial space station is very similar. When we have a commercial model, there'll be many, many more opportunities to monetize microgravity. And so that's really what we're playing in that part of the field. Speaking of SpaceX, obviously saw this very public feud between Elon Musk and President Trump last week, and it highlighted just how far along SpaceX is versus other parts of the space industry, whether it's Starlink with the internet connection or the Falcon rockets and their capability to bring astronauts to space, the fact that they have a contract to help deorbit the

International Space Station. How do you see the space economy and the competitive landscape evolving? Well I'm very bullish. I mean SpaceX is a key player, they have key capabilities, but we have Blue Origin, we have Rocket Lab, we have Firefly, we have other new entrants. And then also in Europe, they're trying to build a launch capability. Japanese and India have a launch capability. So I'm actually very bullish about the future of launch. And then of course, what that enables is all these great hardware and infrastructure projects. And that's really what we play.

So we're not playing in launch. We're playing in the infrastructure layer being built in space. NASA is your single biggest customer. NASA is being shook up right now. The administrator nomination was cold. How are you navigating those dynamics at that agency? Focused on delivering on our commitments. So we've achieved 23 technical milestones on STARLAB, our space station program. We're going to continue to execute on that. NASA will figure out, you know, who the new

administrator is, but I think it'll be, you know, for the most part steady as it goes. And if you even look at the president's so-called skinny budget, it was very bullish for commercial LEO destinations, which is the commercial space station effort. So we're feeling very good about that opportunity there. And leadership matters, the NASA administrator will matter. But right now we're just focusing on our customers. We saw it yesterday with Andral topping

the CNBC disruptor list. We see it with you going public with Voyager today. It does seem that commercial space, and also with publicly traded stocks already, but commercial space and defense tech have moved into the mainstream. How much is policy pushing this forward? I think policy matters and certainly sentiment matters and I think what recognition is happening is that the technology has matured. So the way we like to talk about

Voyager is a technology and innovation platform disrupting A&D and I think leaning into that technology and innovation platform disrupting A&D. And I think leaning into that technology and innovation piece is critical. So I think people now understand that the technology has matured to a level where you can actually have mission critical solutions that work the first time, every time. And because the tech has matured,

I think the companies are now ready for prime time. In addition to having this company, you're also a space investor. Back before the space economy was sort of something we're talking about company, you're also a space investor back before the space economy was sort of something we're talking about mainstream. You're also an astronaut. What do investors need to know and understand about the space economy? Well, there's all kinds of risk, right? You have technical risk, you have regulatory risk, you have execution risk. There is, I would say, financial risk in the sense that

some of these models are super capex heavy, right? So you might be right about the company but get crushed with dilution along the way. So I think understand the risk. I oversimplify it perhaps. I always focus on the team because I think if you have the right team you can pivot when you need to and manage technical risk, manage regulatory risk, manage financial risk. But yeah, I think people underestimate, they underestimate the risk and they, I'm sorry, overestimate their ability to judge risk and they underestimate how important the team is.

When we talk about space, there is always risk inherent in space projects specifically. Right. Paths of profitability, how do you get there? When we talk about space, there is always risk inherent in space projects specifically. Paths of profitability, how do you get there? Well, at the operating segment level today, our company is already profitable. Obviously we have some corporate cost structure that is necessary to become a public company. So we're in a good spot right now, as it is. Obviously we have a lot of dry powder to continue to scale the company and as we do that I think there'll be a lot of operating leverage that we're enjoying and I think the numbers will take care of themselves.

Near-term versus long-term, where are the big growth opportunities? Is it on the defense side? Is it on the space side? Something else? Yeah I would say we're seeing more growth on the national security and defense side mainly because the budget dollars flowing into that area are much larger. But space is still a big growth vector for us, but I would say the bias is towards national security and defense right now. This IPO, a lot of demand going into it here with Wall Street. What does it enable you to do to be a publicly traded company and to do so as a traditional IPO?

Yeah, I think first of all provide hopefully some leadership for the industry on what a well-run public company looks like. You know we had a little bit of a SPAC craze, some of those specs turned out well, some did not. So I think a new era of just here's a high quality public company, here's how it's run, here's how to communicate with the street, here's how to deliver on your commitments. So that's one. Second, of course, is the capital structure. Cost of capital is much lower for a public company.

So we're excited about that. We put in place a credit facility recently in addition to the IPO proceeds. So we're gonna have a lot of liquidity. And that's probably the final point is we've been quite acquisitive. We've made seven acquisitions since our founding. I would anticipate making more acquisitions and obviously if you have a

public currency that makes it a bit easier to execute on that. So that's a that's another ambition we have. You and I have talked about this vision of a Berkshire Hathaway of space and defense. Is that still the vision? I think more... I admire Berkshire Hathaway for their discipline and acquisitions and the fact that they acquire high quality assets. We're much more of an integrated operating entity, so I would think Danahur is a great, we admire Danahur, we admire Heiko, we admire Transdime.

So I think if you can kind of blend all those companies together into something truly unique and really lean into the innovation and technology piece, that's Voyager. What are the new technologies and new capabilities you're testing today? Well a lot of it has to do with propulsion technology. So whether it's in-space propulsion or propulsion that would go on a missile defense shield, the ability to modulate solid fuel propulsion is a real game changer and we have Core IP addressing that. So that's one technology. Obviously the new generation

space stations, you know, we're going to have a much larger module than what would exist on the ISS. It's going to be optimized for research, so I'm excited about that as well and lots of other. Also we have some software products that are very cutting edge and software enabled hardware solutions that we're pretty excited about as well. Dylan Taylor, I've watched your technologies. Thank you so much. Thank you Morgan. 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.