From Institutional Investor, November 26:
As interest grows, restrictions once preventing wide scale investment could potentially be a thing of the past.
The space industry was once the exclusive domain of the government. Agencies like NASA in the US, Roscosmos in Russia and the China National Space Administration have long dominated space exploration and the industry surrounding it, making private sector investment or innovation all but impossible.
However, there has been a seismic shift over the last few years that has seen an emergence of increasingly influential private companies almost exclusively focused on (the) space and its commercialization. As a result, big investors are increasingly interested in space, just as they have been in other trends such as AI and crypto.
The rise in interest is tangible. Within the last week alone II has attended two separate investor focused events that have either been entirely focused on the sector or predominantly so. At Deutsche Bank’s Global Space Summit last week, attendance was up by almost one hundred percent compared to 2023 and of just over 400 attendees nearly half were investors; and at Baron Capital’s investor day earlier this month the level of excitement for SpaceX from the 5,000 mostly retail investors in attendance was palpable.
Starman and SpaceX
Ron Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital, who affectionately referred to founder and CEO Elon Musk as Spaceman despite not attending the event, outlined interest in SpaceX specifically. “When we started to invest in 2017 they had linear growth but now we have exponential growth, it is really accelerating right now,” he said. “People are clamoring to own stock.”
SpaceX is an undisputed leader in the private space sector, working closely with NASA and launching more rockets into orbit than all its competitors combined, including the Chinese state program. The Starlink satellite internet service also faces very little competition, and its user base is growing fast. Its latest flagship product, Starship, is the largest rocket ever built and has undergone six test flights, with the end goal reportedly to land on the moon.
“Starship is going to change the world, both on planet earth and off,” said Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX COO, at the Baron event. “Elon [Musk] founded this company with the singular purpose and sole vision to build a transportation system necessary to put people on other planets. His vision is currently on Mars. But we’re all starting to look beyond Mars as well.”...
....MUCH MORE
Ms Shotwell has accomplished one hell of a lot at SpaceX. (though she seems pretty young to be in a museum)
On the other hand there is "Luxembourg's ^#@*&! Space Agency and Fund"
