Latest news with #Aetherflux
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How a Robinhood co-founder launched a space-lasers startup
Baiju Bhatt became a billionaire after co-founding Robinhood, the zero-commission online brokerage that became synonymous with the 2021 meme-stock craze. His ambitions for his next act may be more outlandish. Aetherflux, the company Bhatt launched after leaving Robinhood last year, is trying to turn a science fiction idea that Isaac Asimov first sketched out in 1941 into commercial reality: capturing solar power in space and then beaming it down to earth. Others — including NASA, where Bhatt's father worked — have pursued the idea before and given up. Bhatt's twist on Asimov's concept is to deploy a constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit, from which to transmit power to small ground stations using infrared lasers. He aims to reach parts of the globe where traditional delivery of power or fuel is difficult, expensive, or dangerous. Bhatt has identified the US Department of Defense as a possible early adopter, and as Aetherflux plays into President Donald Trump's 'energy dominance' agenda, it has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from the Pentagon. Aetherflux has raised another $50 million from more traditional startup funders including Andreessen Horowitz, Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Bhatt's Robinhood co-founder, Vlad Tenev. It will take another 'hundreds of millions, if not billions' to put Bhatt's plan into action, he acknowledges, but he is planning to launch a 'demonstration mission' within a year. The Stanford physics graduate is leaning into his startup's sci-fi image, decorating one wall of its offices in San Carlos, California, with a madcap, retro-futurist mural featuring bionic presidents, a space-suited bald eagle, and a giant American flag against a galactic backdrop. The country's capitalist economy, where entrepreneurs are willing to put risk capital on the line for a venture like his, 'sets America apart,' Bhatt believes. And he hopes to let more people 'live out their dreams of the cosmos.' His pursuit of the resources needed to bring an unproven concept to life is an extreme example of the task facing most startup founders. Here's how Bhatt's trying to 'yank [Asimov's idea] from the pages of science fiction and manifest it in the world.' Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: Can we start with the space lasers? This sounds like sci-fi. What makes you think it might work? Baiju Bhatt: This was the meaty challenge that I was looking to sink my teeth into [after Robinhood]. My motive was to take something which looked and felt like science fiction, and try to make it a science reality — and to build a business in the process. Our approach from the beginning has been: How can we [develop] this capability with existing building blocks, without needing to have individual scientific breakthroughs? It means that most, if not all, of the components for our demonstration mission are either commercially available or are modifications to things that are commercially available. How do you raise funds for something that has been tried in the past and failed, which might take years to pay off? I say pretty often that space is hard and space is expensive. And one of the fun parts about this is just being very open and direct about [the fact that] we're working on a very, very difficult problem. That being said, I've done this before. I've built a pretty big company. And this is a big and bold mission that we're pursuing. So while our path towards getting there is going to be challenging, and it's going to be a long-term one, we're trying to tackle one of the foundational pillars of the economy. Even putting aside the financial opportunity, this has the potential to be transformative and those things tend to be pretty interesting. If you can make them happen, they change the world. What did you learn from Robinhood that has been valuable to you in founding Aetherflux? A part of what makes this intellectually compelling to me is that it's not the exact same thing. Because why does a person go from finance to starting a space company? It's because you want a challenge. There's a lot of parts of building a company that are transferable, like team-building, recruiting, fundraising, communications, telling the story of the company, making sure that there are clear goals in mind, and orienting people towards a mission. There's also a magic and a camaraderie that comes from working together on a small team on something. Hopefully, when people join a company like this, they want to do the work that is going to be some of the most exciting, impactful work of their life. And the way that you get people to sign up for something like this is you speak to that. You say, 'If we can do this, we change the way that humans interact with space.' What percentage chance do you put on this working out? Will it be successful? Hopefully. Are we going to work hard to make it successful? Yes. Personally, looking at those 10 to 15 years [at Robinhood], what is the thing I'm trying to relive? The thing I'm chasing is the uncertainty, working on something where not a lot of other people are working on it. But I, in my mind's eye, have an inclination that this is the right thing to do, and that the path to doing it is the way that I foresee it's going to play out. And [looking back and asking myself], 'How did you, Baiju, solve the problem along the way, so that you found your way out of the uncertainty?' I miss the times when I didn't know, and then I did know. Tell me about the wall art. It's 20 feet tall, and it's probably 80 feet wide. The concept behind this is the painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware. But instead of on a boat, I wanted him crossing the Van Allen [radiation] belt on a satellite. Then I wanted to have the founding fathers or important US presidents, shirtless and ripped. We've got Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, a hairless cat, George Washington, and Abe Lincoln. Over here we have a T-Rex. That's Ben Franklin, with a Chippendales kind of thing going on. There's Teddy Roosevelt, there's [Ronald] Reagan. That's me — and Tupac [Shakur]. Arizona-based Solestial raised $17 million in May to continue funding its space-based solar panel technology, indicating there is strong investor interest in the once sci-fi concept. Space energy experts have recently warned US lawmakers that the nation could fall behind China in the race to harvest solar power from space. 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TechCrunch
02-07-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Robinhood's co-founder is beaming up (and down) the future of energy
Robinhood's Baiju Bhatt has a new mission: solar power from space. Fresh off a $50 million Series A raise, Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt is going all-in on space-based solar power. His new startup, Aetherflux, wants to launch solar power-collecting satellites into low Earth orbit, with a demo flight set for 2026, and to transmit clean energy back down to Earth. Bhatt sat down with Rebecca Bellan on TechCrunch's Equity podcast to talk about his jump from fintech to frontier tech, what it takes to build a deep tech company from the ground up, and where investor interest in the space economy stands in 2025. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Bhatt thinks now is the time for space-based solar How Aetherflux is thinking about fundraising and scaling And Bellan and Bhatt's idea for a Burning Man light show (yes, really) Bhatt also joined us on stage at StrictlyVC Menlo Park last month — and if you missed it, don't worry. StrictlyVC is coming to Palo Alto; you can join the waitlist here. Equity will be back tomorrow with a special rundown ahead of the long weekend here in the U.S., so stay tuned! Equity is TechCrunch's flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
TechCrunch
27-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Why Robinhood's co-founder is betting on solar power from space
As the co-founder of Robinhood, Baiju Bhatt helped redefine how millions of people interact with trading and investing. Now he's setting his sights even higher — literally — with Aetherflux, a new venture aiming to harness solar power in space. In this chat, Bhatt talks about what drew him to one of the most audacious bets in tech, how building in hard science compares to fintech, and why big risks still matter. Bhatt joined TechCrunch at our StrictlyVC Menlo Park event in June 2025, among several other speakers whose discussions you can find here.
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Robinhood co-founder's big bet on solar energy
Most investors would know Baiju Bhatt as the co-founder of Robinhood. He still sits on the company's board. But now, he has a new venture called Aetherflux. The startup aims to transmit solar energy through satellites. Bhatt he explains how it works to Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Catalysts here. Robinhood's co-founder, Biju Bhat, stepped down from his executive role at the Fintech giant last year to pursue a new endeavor, a space-based solar energy company called Etherflux. Our very own Brian Sozzy got a chance to sit down with him to discuss the company's mission as well as his role on Robinhood's board. Take a listen. The mission is to deliver energy to planet Earth. So, what does that mean? So we're taking this idea of space solar power, which an old NASA idea, Department of Energy from the '70s, of collecting solar power in space, beaming it down to the ground as an alternative energy source. Wild idea. Very wild. So if you pull off what you're trying to pull off, and I hope this doesn't sound really simple and borderline dumb, would we need solar panels anymore on people's roofs? Is that what you're trying to get rid of? I mean, I think it's a technology that kind of both is very complementary to that, and also is in many ways like a direct competitor to that. So when I think about, I think solar panels on roof, like those are useful in some capacity to people. Um, but I think the idea of having these really large solar farms on the ground that take up a tremendous amount of land that have adverse effects on the ecosystem underneath where the solar farms are, right? We can actually take that infrastructure and put it in space. This is kind of what our idea is. And instead project down a beam of power that uses way less real estate on the ground. So maybe this is a good time to just kind of broadly explain what the idea is. Yeah, far, yeah, please. Far out intended, far away. Far out actually. So you have solar panels in space, you have the sunlight from the sun that hits them in space. And the cool thing is, is that if you put it in the right orbit in space, you can have your satellite either continuously illuminated or illuminated a really large percentage of the time. And you get a constant amount of sunlight energy. So that sunlight energy is then converted to electricity on the satellite. And it's either stores the electricity in batteries or directly transmits that electrical power to the thing that transmits the power down to the ground, which is an infrared laser. So you have I'll put it in there far away. You're still on the Robinhood board. Now we, the past few years, I I've marveled at what Robinhood has done. Um, culturally, the company seems different. The top and bottom line results are different. They actually won our comeback of the year award last year. Um, has visions of potentially being a future JP Morgan, acquisitions. Like, what was a turning point inside of Robinhood that can help explain why the stock now near at a record high? Like, did something happen? I think we've been pretty focused on the mission from the beginning, right? And I think that's kind of been the sort of North Star, kind of coming back to the the parallel to Etherflux, right? The mission of democratizing finance for all. I think it's one of the things that motivates the company and motivates a lot of the decisions that we make there. And it's just been like really hard work and execution year and year out. I think, from my perspective, having, you know, co-founded the company with Vlad, I kind of see like all the little steps along the way and kind of the hard work it take took to get to every one of the different steps. And, yeah, I'm I'm proud of the execution. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Robinhood founder who might just revolutionize energy, if he succeeds
Baiju Bhatt is building something the space industry has largely dismissed, and it might be more groundbreaking than anyone realizes. When Baiju Bhatt stepped away from his role as Chief Creative Officer at Robinhood last year, only those close to him could have predicted his next move: launching a space company built around tech that much of the aerospace industry has written off as impractical. That's just fine with Bhatt, co-founder of the trading app that democratized investing for millions – it means less competition for his new company, Aetherflux, which has raised $60 million on its quest to prove that beaming solar power from space isn't science fiction but a new chapter for both renewable energy and national defense. 'Until you do stuff in space, if you happen to be an aerospace company, you're actually an aspiring space company,' Bhatt said on Wednesday night at a TechCrunch StrictlyVC event held in a glass-lined structure on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. 'I would like to transition from 'aspiring space company' to 'space company' sooner.' Bhatt's space ambitions date back to his childhood. He says that his dad, who worked as an optometrist in India, spent a decade applying to graduate physics programs in the United States, eventually taking a hard left turn and landing at NASA as a research scientist. He then proceeded to use the powers of reverse psychology on his son, says Bhatt. 'My dad worked at NASA through my whole childhood,' Bhatt said. 'He was very adamant: 'When you grow up, I'm not going to tell you you should study physics.' Which is a very effective way of convincing somebody to do exactly that.' Now, at roughly the same age his father was when he joined NASA, Bhatt is making his own move into space, seemingly with an eye toward creating even more impact than at Robinhood. He's certainly taking a big swing with the effort. Traditional space solar power concepts have focused on massive geostationary satellites the size of small cities, using microwave transmission to beam energy to Earth. The scale and complexity made these projects perpetually '20 years away,' Bhatt said Wednesday night. 'Everything was too big,' Bhatt continued. 'The size of the array, the size of the spacecraft was the size of a small city. That's real science fiction stuff.' His solution is both far smaller and more nimble, he suggested. Most notably, instead of massive microwave antennas that require precise phase coordination, Aetherflux's satellites will use fiber lasers, essentially converting solar power back into focused light that can be precisely targeted at receivers on the ground. 'We take the solar power that we collect from the sun with solar panels, and we take that energy and put it into a set of diodes that turn it back into light,' Bhatt said. 'That light goes into a fiber where there's a laser, which then lets us point that down to the ground.' The idea is to launch a demonstration satellite in June of next year. National security, first While Bhatt envisions eventually building 'a true industrial-scale energy company,' he's starting with national defense – a strategic decision that could give America a significant advantage. The Department of Defense has approved funding for Aetherflux's program, recognizing the military value of beaming power to forward bases without the logistical nightmare of transporting fuel. 'It allows the U.S. to have energy out in the battlefield for deployed bases, and it doesn't have the limitation of needing to transport fuel,' Bhatt explained. The precision Bhatt is promising is pretty remarkable. Aetherflux's initial target is a laser spot 'bigger than 10 meters diameter' on the ground, but Bhatt believes they can shrink it to 'five to 10 meters, potentially even smaller than that.' These compact, lightweight receivers would be 'of little to no strategic value if captured by an adversary' and 'small enough and portable enough that you can literally bring them out into the battlefield.' While much remains to be seen, success for Aetherflux could potentially change the game for American military operations worldwide. In addition to his own father, Bhatt said that he draws inspiration from another entrepreneur who proved you can master multiple industries: Elon Musk. Importantly, like Musk, who moved from payments to revolutionize electric vehicles and space travel, Bhatt believes his outsider perspective 'is actually an advantage,' he said, echoing how fresh eyes sometimes see what industry veterans miss. Of course, unlike the iterate-fast mentality of companies like Robinhood that can roll out, and also sometimes roll back, software features, space hardware requires a higher-stakes approach. You only get one shot when your satellite launches. 'We build one spacecraft, we bolt it to the fairing inside of the SpaceX rocket, we put it in space, and it detaches, and then the thing better work,' Bhatt said. 'You can't go up there and tighten the bolt.' Asked during the sit-down how he pressure-tests that spacecraft, Bhatt said that Aetherflux is pursuing a 'hardware-rich' approach, which means building and testing components while refining designs. 'The right balance is not waiting five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, as is the case with many important space programs,' he said. 'People's careers are oftentimes shorter than that.' He also noted that if Aetherflux succeeds, the implications extend far beyond military applications. Space-based solar power could provide baseload renewable energy, or solar power that works day and night, anywhere on Earth. That might mean turning upside down the ways we currently think about energy distribution, offering power to remote locations without massive infrastructure investments, and providing emergency power during disasters. Aetherflux has already hired a mix of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers from Lawrence Livermore Labs, Rivian, Cruise, and SpaceX, among other places, and Bhatt said the 25-person organization is still hiring. 'If you are the kind of person that wants to work on stuff that's super, super difficult, please come and contact us,' he told attendees. He has more than his reputation riding on what happens from here. Bhatt self-funded Aetherflux's first $10 million, and he also contributed to a more recent $50 million round that was led by Index Ventures and Interlagos, and included Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and NEA, among others. Its timeline is aggressive, too. The plan is to launch a demonstration satellite precisely one year from now. But there's a prototype for Bhatt's approach. GPS started as a DARPA project before becoming ubiquitous civilian infrastructure. Similarly, Aetherflux is working closely with DARPA's beaming expert, Dr. Paul Jaffe, who Bhatt called 'a pretty good friend to our company.' Jaffe also works with other companies developing similar technology, positioning DARPA as a bridge between military applications and commercial potential. 'There's this precedent of doing stuff in space where there's a really important part of working with the government,' Bhatt said. 'But we actually think, over time, as the technology matures and things like [SpaceX's reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle] Starship really open up commercial access to space, this is not going to be just a Department of Defense thing.' 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