J. Alberto Palacios

BREAKING: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has raised $10 billion at a $140 billion valuation in its first-ever funding round with outside investors, the Wall Street Journal reports. Bezos is investing another $2 billion himself, bringing the roughly 26-year-old space company to about $30 billion of cumulative funding from its founder. Internal projections reviewed by the Journal show Blue Origin expects revenue to climb from roughly $800 million in 2025 and $1.4 billion this year to more than $30 billion by 2030. The company is betting that growth will come from New Glenn launches, a planned satellite communications business and a future fleet of AI satellites. Blue Origin now employs roughly 15,000 people as it works to expand New Glenn production and rebuild its Florida launch infrastructure following a vehicle explosion earlier this year.

BREAKING: Google $GOOGL will launch an experimental AI satellite on Oct. 1 carrying four of its TPU chips, the New York Times reports, marking the first orbital test for Project Suncatcher - Google’s effort to eventually build AI data centers in space. The satellite will test whether Google’s AI hardware can reliably operate in orbit and will carry enough compute to answer simple Gemini queries from space. Google plans two additional satellite launches in 2027 and is already studying future fleets of 80+ satellites that could link together as an orbital AI data center. The company believes space-based data centers could become cost-competitive with terrestrial facilities by the mid-2030s as launch costs fall and orbital solar power becomes more attractive. If successful, Project Suncatcher would move one of the world’s largest AI companies from simply studying space-based compute to actually running AI hardware in orbit.

BREAKING: The Pentagon has awarded Katalyst Space a contract to build a robotic spacecraft that will assemble a solar-power station in orbit and beam the electricity back to Earth. Under the ASGARD program, Katalyst’s NEXUS spacecraft will carry modular tiles developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory into low Earth orbit. Its autonomous robotic arms will assemble the tiles into a large solar array, convert the collected energy into microwaves and transmit it to a ground receiver. If the technology scales, it could deliver power to remote bases, unmanned systems and contested locations without relying entirely on vulnerable grids or fuel convoys. Orbital assembly would let these systems grow beyond the size constraints of a single rocket, with the architecture designed to be resupplied, expanded, and upgraded after deployment. The technology is not starting from zero, as NRL previously tested solar-to-microwave conversion aboard the X-37B and transmitted 1.6 kilowatts across one kilometer on Earth. ASGARD will combine power beaming with robotic orbital construction, potentially laying the foundation for energy infrastructure supporting military operations, satellites, and in-space manufacturing. Katalyst announced the Pentagon award today. The contract value and launch date were not disclosed.