Category: TECH

As humans spend increasing amounts of time indoors, we lose access to the sun’s natural benefits. Recognition of season affective disorder has grown accordingly. While the actual occurrence of the condition is low (around 5% — or 10 million or so Americans),  it’s led to increasing awareness of the sun’s impact on the production of serotonin in the brain – and its resulting impact on the human body.

Light therapy lamps have become increasingly popular as a result. I bought one a while back. It’s big, unwieldy and beams bright light like a tanning lamp. These products rely on the visible light spectrum, in a bid to mimic the sun’s impact for those of us who spend more of our waking hours in front of a computer than we care to mention.

More recently, use of the “near-infrared” (NIR) segment of the light spectrum has been growing in popularity as a potential alternative to visible light. As the name implies, the segment sits between infrared and visible light, at around 600 and 1000 nanometers. According to the National Institute of Health, “low-level light therapy in the far-red (FR) to near-infrared (NIR) range of the spectrum, collectively termed photobiomodulation (PBM), has gained worldwide attention in recent years as a novel tool for experimental therapeutic applications in a variety of medical conditions.”

This weekend at MWC, a Dutch company (fittingly, given the lack of sunlight present during Netherlands winters) called Seaborough showcased small devices designed to replace large SAD lamps. One sits next to the computer and the other clips above display, looking a lot like an external webcam. Both plug into the USB port for power.

Unfortunately, the devices are proof of concept. The company told me it’s currently looking for partnerships to license the tech. I shot the lead image with an iPhone, which is able to capture NIR, which is why you see that purple-reddish glow. You can also see the glow coming from the surrounding bezels. Ideally ,Seaborough would eventually like to build it into the laptops themselves, though third party accessories seem far more likely. Heck, why not built it into an actual webcam?

As someone who’s battled a good bit of depression over the last few years, I’d certainly be willing to check it out. This stuff is really hard to review anecdotally, of course, as you need to factor in a potential placebo effect. I will say, however, that some research has been conducted on the matter. Take this, from a paper published a decade ago, “The results showed PBM treatment only at 6.5 J·cm−2 to have consistent positive benefits on well-being and health, specifically improving mood, reducing drowsiness, reducing IFN-γ, and resting heart rate.”

The research notes that the impact was only experienced in the winter months. It also didn’t have a meaningful impact on participants’ circadian rhythm. That said, it’s probably still safe to suggest that the jury is still out on a lot of this stuff.

Social media giant Reddit filed to go public today. Its long-awaited S-1 filing will see it approach the public markets potentially at the head of a long column of richly valued technology startups and private companies that need to find an exit this year.

The timing of Reddit’s IPO is not a surprise.

The company’s got a long and tangled history. It was sold in its infancy, only to be later spun back out. Today Reddit approaches the public markets with more than $800 million worth of revenue in 2023, up from $666.7 million in 2022.

However, the company remains unprofitable on both a GAAP and adjusted basis, and continues to consume cash to fund its operations. Scale has not yet solved the profitability question for Reddit, which could limit its potential valuation when it does list its shares.

In 2022 Reddit generated a net loss of $158.6 million, and adjusted EBITDA of negative $108.4 million. In 2023 those figures improved to a $90.8 million net loss, and $69.3 million worth of negative adjusted EBITDA. The company’s free cash flow improved from -$100.3 million to -$84.8 million over the same timeframe.

The company may be making progress towards stemming the red ink that is missed in its annual figures. In the final quarter of 2023, Reddit not only posted what was at least a local maximum in revenue terms – $249.8 million – but also a net profit of $18.5 million. While the GAAP profit is notable for the fourth quarter, the company’s free cash flow was still negative in the period, ending the three-month period at -$22.0 million.

Reddit raised more than $1 billion while private, according to Crunchbase data. That figure includes a massive $410 million Series F raised in 2021 and a smaller $368 million Series E raised earlier the same year. The Series E pushed Reddit’s valuation to $6.4 billion, while its Series F took it to a roughly $10 billion valuation.

Both of those bubble-era valuations will be tested in Reddit’s now quickly forthcoming IPO. But the company’s debut will be more than a test for certain private-market startup valuations. Reddit is reportedly trying something novel in its own flotation.

An IPO with a twist

In what is broadly viewed as an unorthodox move, Reddit reportedly plans to reserve an undetermined number of shares for 75,000 of its users, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. Those users will be given the chance to scoop up shares of Reddit at its IPO price before the stock even begins trading – something typically reserved only for large investors.

Tailwinds

Reddit’s IPO filing comes at an auspicious time. Reuters reported that Reddit has reached a deal with Google to allow the search giant to use its data. The publication pipped the deal’s value at around $60 million per year. That makes it worth roughly 7.5% of its 2023 revenue, a very nice tailwind for its 2024 results.

If Reddit is able to secure similar deals with other major AI model providers like OpenAI, it could see its revenue base expand from new sources this year in a manner that could undergird its first few quarters’ results as a public company.

Reddit is known to be a key source of data for LLMs, which could give the social media company a way to monetize from the current AI wave at very high gross margins.

In its S-1 filing, the company said that it is in the early stages of giving third parties the ability “license access to search, analyze, and display historical and real-time data from our platform.” Investors love a growth story, and Reddit has a fresh revenue plank to crow about as it embarks on its eventual roadshow.

The investor pitch

The popular site is impressively growing its user base. The number of global daily active unique users (DAUqs) climbed 27% in the three-month period ended December 31, 2023. For a site that has existed for a decade, that’s a significant achievement.  Specifically, according to the filing, Reddit had more than 500 million visitors in December 2023 alone and, an average of 73.1 million daily active uniques globally in the three months ended December 31. 

Looking ahead, Reddit believes it still has plenty of opportunity to grow revenue through advertising. Unsurprisingly, it claims to be in the “early stages” of using machine learning and prediction models to “better match supply and demand and deliver return on investment” for its advertisers. Examples of that include using prediction models to do things like help better predict conversion rates of an ad.

Advertising revenues in the technology world have recovered to a degree, with companies like Meta and Amazon that sport massive ad incomes reporting earnings that included growth in that area of their larger business. After some time in the doldrums, the tides of the economy could be tilting back in Reddit’s favor.

Reddit wants to parlay its user growth into advertiser revenue growth. It ambitiously estimates that its total addressable market globally from advertising alone, not including China and Russia, to be a whopping $1.4 trillion. It’s talking specifically about desktop and mobile web, display, video and social direct response ads, in addition to search advertising.

Reddit is not an enterprise SaaS business, so it has a different business model than much of startup-land. But if it does manage to price its IPO well, and put up some strong early trading results, it could help nudge some other late-stage, private-market tech companies off the sidelines and into the IPO chute. Not only would that make your friendly local venture capital reporters happy, as we love the data that IPO filings bring to us as much as we love oxygen, a surge in public-market liquidity would also be a boon to venture investors long sitting on paper returns that they would love to convert to cash.

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more profiles here.

As a reader, if you see a name we’ve missed and feel should be on the list, please email us and we’ll seek to add them. Here’s some key people you should know:

The gender gap in AI

In a New York Times piece late last year, the Gray Lady broke down how the current boom in AI came to be — highlighting many of the usual suspects like Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Larry Page. The journalism went viral – not for what was reported, but instead for what it failed to mention: women.

The Times’ list featured 12 men — most of them leaders of AI or tech companies. Many had no training or education, formal or otherwise, in AI.

Contrary to the Times’ suggestion, the AI craze didn’t start with Musk sitting adjacent to Page at a mansion in the Bay. It began long before that, with academics, regulators, ethicists and hobbyists working tirelessly in relative obscurity to build the foundations for the AI and GenAI systems we have today.

Elaine Rich, a retired computer scientist formerly at the University of Texas at Austin, published one of the first textbooks on AI in 1983, and later went on to become the director of a corporate AI lab in 1988. Harvard professor Cynthia Dwork made waves decades ago in the fields of AI fairness, differential privacy and distributed computing. And Cynthia Breazeal, a roboticist and professor at MIT and the co-founder of Jibo, the robotics startup, worked to develop one of the earliest “social robots,” Kismet, in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Despite the many ways in which women have advanced AI tech, they make up a tiny sliver of the global AI workforce. According to a 2021 Stanford study, just 16% of tenure-track faculty focused on AI are women. In a separate study released the same year by the World Economic Forum, the co-authors find that women only hold 26% of analytics-related and AI positions.

In worse news, the gender gap in AI is widening — not narrowing.

Nesta, the U.K.’s innovation agency for social good, conducted a 2019 analysis that concluded that the proportion of AI academic papers co-authored by at least one woman hadn’t improved since the 1990s. As of 2019, just 13.8% of the AI research papers on Arxiv.org, a repository for preprint scientific papers, were authored or co-authored by women, with the numbers steadily decreasing over the preceding decade.

Reasons for disparity

The reasons for the disparity are many. But a Deloitte survey of women in AI highlights a few of the more prominent (and obvious) ones, including judgment from male peers and discrimination as a result of not fitting into established male-dominated molds in AI.

It starts in college: 78% of women responding to the Deloitte survey said they didn’t have a chance to intern in AI or machine learning while they were undergraduates. Over half (58%) said they ended up leaving at least one employer because of how men and women were treated differently, while 73% considered leaving the tech industry altogether due to unequal pay and an inability to advance in their careers.

The lack of women is hurting the AI field.

Nesta’s analysis found that women are more likely than men to consider societal, ethical and political implications in their work on AI — which isn’t surprising considering women live in a world where they’re belittled on the basis of their gender, products in the market have been designed for men, and women with children are often expected to balance work with their role as primary caregivers.

With any luck, TechCrunch’s humble contribution — a series on accomplished women in AI — will help move the needle in the right direction. But there’s clearly a lot of work to be done.

The women we profile share many suggestions for those who wish to grow and evolve the AI field for the better. But a common thread runs throughout: strong mentorship, commitment and leading by example. Organizations can affect change by enacting policies — hiring, education or otherwise — that elevate women already in, or looking to break into, the AI industry. And decision-makers in positions of power can wield that power to push for more diverse, supportive workplaces for women.

Change won’t happen overnight. But every revolution begins with a small step.

Managing a social presence these days can be tough. It’s even tougher for those who are experimenting with the new wave of Twitter-like services, like Mastodon, Nostr, and Bluesky, where staying active means a lot of duplicate posts to different networks. Thankfully, developers are starting to address our needs for cross-posting tools. In addition to scheduling services like Fedica and Postpone, there’s now a new app, Nootti, that allows you to post to Mastodon, Nostr, and Bluesky from one interface.

While we’re still awaiting the launch of multi-service social networking and news trackers, like Tapestry, Nootti’s iOS app can at least save you some effort when you want to share a post with your followers across three of the more popular Twitter/X alternatives. Plus, using Apple’s native “Share via…” option, you can cross-post that same message to any other apps, you choose, like X or Meta’s Threads. (A clever workaround given Threads’ API is not yet open and X’s is too expensive for indie developers to use.)

Nootti, whose name is Finnish for “note,” is fairly bare-bones. It won’t offer all the bells and whistles that come with posting directly on the platforms themselves, like the ability to add polls and alt text on images, or get hashtag suggestions, as on Mastodon. However, if you have a simple text (or text-plus-media) post, Nootti is capable. As you type into the text entry box, Nootti counts how many characters you have left. You can also upload media from your Camera Roll, if you choose, then tap the envelope icon to send the post on its way.

To use Nootti, you’ll first have to configure your accounts in the settings. (Note that you can use an app password for Bluesky, instead of your main password, even though that option isn’t spelled out in the app.)

What makes Nootti compelling is that you can easily customize each post slightly for the different platforms. To do so, you first type your post in the “Main” tab, then switch over to the tabs for the other social networks. The post will be automatically filled in on each tab, but you can edit the message for the individual networks. For instance, you might take a more playful air with your posts on Bluesky, while adding hashtags to your posts on Mastodon. When you hit the envelope icon, the customized set of messages is published to all three networks at once.

Developer Petri Kajander says he built Nootti for himself.

“The current state of social media is defragmentation and, if you just wait, it will not change the status quo. You need to be active to be part of the change,” he says. “A lot of people have stopped posting altogether or they are only in one place. This means that you have to extend your presence to multiple places but it takes too much time. Since none of the networks is s clear winner, the best strategy is to post to multiple places, but keep the engagement local to that network and also to customize each post to each platform,” Kajander adds.

He explains that he doesn’t believe in auto-posting either, which is why he wanted an app that requires you to write your own posts.

Nootti is a free download on the App Store, but Kajander is now developing the paid version, he says, although he hasn’t yet landed on what revenue model it will use.

Kajander said he also hasn’t made a decision about supporting other networks, like Threads, or even if that will be required, once it becomes a federated app using the ActivityPub protocol. In the meantime, you can cross-post to any other app with the share button within Nootti instead.

Waymo is voluntarily recalling the software that powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona, in December. It’s the company’s first recall.

Waymo chief safety officer Mauricio Peña described the crashes as “minor” in a blog post, and said neither vehicle was carrying passengers at the time. There were no injuries. He also said Waymo’s ride-hailing service — which is live in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin — “is not and has not been interrupted by this update.” The company declined to share video of the crashes with TechCrunch.

Waymo said it developed, tested, and validated a fix to the software that it started deploying to its fleet on December 20. All of its robotaxis received that software update by January 12.

“This voluntary recall reflects how seriously we take our responsibility to safely deploy our technology and to transparently communicate with the public,” Peña wrote.

The recall comes at a time when self-driving cars are facing intense scrutiny following a series of high-profile crashes and controversies — including one last week where a Waymo robotaxi struck a cyclist. This past weekend, a Waymo autonomous vehicle was vandalized and burned by a crowd of people in San Francisco. Rival operator Cruise, meanwhile, has suspended its operations as it deals with the fallout of a crash from last October. It hired its first chief safety officer this week.

The crashes that prompted the recall both happened on December 11. Peña wrote that one of Waymo’s vehicles came upon a backward-facing pickup truck being “improperly towed.” The truck was “persistently angled across a center turn lane and a traffic lane.” Peña said the robotaxi “incorrectly predicted the future motion of the towed vehicle” because of this mismatch between the orientation of the tow truck and the pickup, and made contact. The company told TechCrunch this caused minor damage to the front left bumper.

The tow truck did not stop, though, according to Peña, and just a few minutes later another Waymo robotaxi made contact with the same pickup truck being towed. The company told TechCrunch this caused minor damage to the front left bumper and a sensor. (The tow truck stopped after the second crash.)

Waymo said it contacted the Phoenix Police Department and the Arizona Department of Public Safety on the day of the crashes, and told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about them on December 15. The company and NHTSA staff have had “four subsequent conversations” about the crashes, before Waymo decided to voluntarily recall the software that was in use at the time.

The recall could increase public pressure on Waymo, as cities, citizens and government agencies are scrutinizing the promise of autonomous vehicle fleets. Robotaxis are already facing pushback in Los Angeles, including from the Teamsters union. The California Department of Motor Vehicles is already investigating Waymo’s aforementioned crash with a cyclist. And the Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, among others, are probing Cruise’s handling of its October crash.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the last few days in tech.

This week, social network Bluesky opened for anyone to join — which feels appropriate here in NYC, given the sunshine and unseasonably warm temperatures we’ve been enjoying. For those more inclined to while away the days indoors — and contemplating a Vision Pro purchase — Brian published his review. Give it a read; he doesn’t mince words.

Lots else happened, including a Rivian SUV reveal, government hackers targeting iPhone owners and Meta cutting off third-party access to Facebook Groups. We cover it all and more in this edition of WiR — but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.

News

Nothing but Bluesky: After almost a year as an invite-only app, Bluesky, a promising micro-blogging platform backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is now open to the public.

Rivian’s new ride: Rivian will reveal its next-generation vehicle — a smaller, cheaper electric SUV known as R2 — on March 7, the company announced Monday morning.

Governments targeting iPhones: Government hackers last year exploited three unknown vulnerabilities in Apple’s iPhone operating system to target victims with spyware developed by a European startup, according to Google.

Meta severs Group access: Meta recently announced it’ll soon be shutting down its Facebook Groups API. It’s throwing some businesses and social media marketers into disarray, Sarah writes.

A WeWork comeback: Adam Neumann, who co-founded flexible workspace provider WeWork in 2010 and notoriously stepped down nine years later, is attempting to buy the company out of bankruptcy, according to reports.

Chinese hackers lurking inside: China-backed hackers have maintained access to American critical infrastructure for “at least five years” with the long-term goal of launching “destructive” cyberattacks, a coalition of U.S. intelligence agencies warned on Wednesday.

Analysis

Apple Vision Pro review: In his review of the Vision Pro, Brian writes that the $3,500 headset is very much still a work in progress — offering glimpses of a future that’ll live or die by developers.

Joe Rogan, liberated: Amanda writes why it’s good for Spotify that Joe Rogan’s podcast is no longer exclusive.

Podcasts

On Equity, the crew took a deep look at a number of startup fundraisings, including new capital for vertical software-as-a-service, fintech and edtech; how quickly SUMA Wealth is growing; and why Bluesky is flying high.

Meanwhile, Found featured Beatrice Dixon, the co-founder of plant-based vaginal wellness brand The Honey Pot.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed Devin Finzer, the CEO of NFT marketplace OpenSea. He co-founded OpenSea in 2017, and it quickly became one of the best-known — and well-funded — NFT marketplaces.

TechCrunch+

AI, ol’ reliable: Alex writes that it appears the market is willing to accept that software imbued with new AI capabilities will cost more — so software companies of all sizes will have something new to upsell existing customers and potentially land new accounts.

Fast fashion breakup: Fast fashion is an industry ensnared in labor issues and copyright problems, and it has an immense environmental impact due to its wastewater and carbon emissions — which is why VCs need to reconsider it, Rebecca writes.

Bonus round

A sidewalk robot success story: Sidewalk delivery robot services appear to be stalling left and right. But a pioneer in the concept, Starship Technologies, says it’s profitable and has now raised a round of funding to scale up to meet market demand.

Lego Fortnite is only two months old, but Epic Games is already out with an even bigger collaboration.

Epic and Disney announced today that the companies will partner on an “all-new games and entertainment universe” that will bring characters from Disney’s deep catalogue to life through Fortnite.

The scope of the project sounds massive, to say the least. In a press release, the companies described the forthcoming project as “an all-new games and entertainment universe” offering players a way to “play, watch, shop and engage with” characters and storylines from Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar. The collaboration will use Epic’s Unreal Engine and will be “interoperable” with Fortnite, tying into Epic’s existing online social gaming infrastructure.

“This marks Disney’s biggest entry ever into the world of games and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said of the partnership. Disney will also take a $1.5 billion equity stake in Epic Games as part of the deal.

The Disney collaboration comes as a surprise, but fits right into Epic’s current roadmap. Epic has been expanding the former’s scope in recent years. What began as a popular battle royale game (technically a player-versus-environment game before that, if we’re nitpicking) has exploded into a hub of user-generated game modes and brand collaborations.

In December, Epic further signaled its commitment to expand Fortnite beyond its roots as a multiplayer shooter with the addition of Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival — three full standalone games in completely different genres than the original Fortnite.

TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility – your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

This week, read about autonomous vehicle company Motional, why the Tesla board is likely having discussions about Elon Musk’s 2018 $56 billion pay package, a new unicorn focused on student transportation, and more.

Let’s go!

A little bird

Here’s a fun one for y’all. Amid all the layoffs and startup failures, there is also hiring going on.

A little bird pointed us to one particularly interesting hire over at Elon Musk’s The Boring Company. Vignesh Swaminathan — who is also known as Mr. Barricade to his 1.8 million TikTok followers — recently took a position as a senior civil engineer. Why so noteworthy? Swaminathan is a well-known urban planner (and TikToker) who spent the better part of a decade focused on designing bikeways and pedestrian paths as CEO and president of Crossroad Labs.

It appears that Crossroad Labs, a Cupertino, California-based civil engineering design firm, shut down in January. Swaminathan took the job at The Boring Company a couple of weeks later. We wonder if his previous urban planner and bike-focused experience will be put to work at The Boring Company?

Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

Deal of the week

A new unicorn has been born. I’m talk about Zūm, a student transportation startup that uses a mix of buses, vans and other vehicles combined with software to provide efficient and safe routes to and from school for kids.

The startup, founded and run by Ritu Narayan, raised $140 million in a Series E funding round led by global investment firm GIC. Other investors included Climate Investment, Sequoia and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The funding pushed its valuation to $1.3 billion

Zūm has made headway in the past several years, locking in school district customers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Nashville and Maryland. Now it’s focused on converting its fleet of vehicles to all EVs by 2027 while continuing to grow its footprint.

Other deals that got my attention …

BluSmart, an Indian ride-hailing startup that competes with Uber and homegrown rival Ola, raised $25 million from Switzerland-headquartered impact fund ResponsAbility in a mezzanine structure, including partial equity dilution and debt.

OK so this isn’t so much a deal, as a dealbreaker. Cake, the Swedish electric motorcycle startup, filed for bankruptcy February 1 after failing to secure enough investment. Cake joins a growing list of micromobility companies that have run into financial trouble over the past year, most recently VanMoof, Superpedestrian and Bird.

Kura, a UK startup that combined a school bus service with a software platform to safeguard pupils, was acquired by “smart buses” startup Zeelo.

Notable reads and other tidbits

ADAS

XPeng, Tesla’s challenger from China, is making plans to bring its advanced driving assistance tech to international markets.

Autonomous vehicles

Motional is the product of a joint venture between Hyundai and automotive supplier Aptiv. But that relationship is changing. Aptiv said it will no longer allocate capital toward the endeavor. We explain why.

Electric vehicles, batteries & charging

Arrival, the commercial EV startup, is being removed from the Nasdaq stock exchange as it speeds toward dissolution.

Tesla was sued by 25 California counties alleging the automaker has repeatedly mishandled hazardous waste at facilities throughout the state. Two days later, the parties settled with Tesla agreeing to $1.5 million in fines and a five-year injunction that requires inspections.

In-car tech

Hesai, a Chinese company that makes lidar sensors, was added to the U.S. Department of Defense’s list of “Chinese Military Companies.” Hesai called the inclusion “unjust, capricious and meritless” and said that the sensors are for civilian use only. Hesai also emphasized the company doesn’t have ties of any kind to any military in any country.

People

Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package is unfair, a Delaware judge ruled. If the decision stands (many expect an appeal) it will void the largest compensation deal in corporate history.

This week’s wheels

I recently spent a week in this hanauma mint-colored Genesis GV60 Performance. Top takeaways? This is a slick-looking and premium (inside and out) all-electric vehicle that is fast off the line and pretty darn fun to drive, but not exactly amazing on tight mountain turns.

The all-wheel drive vehicle (there are electric motors in the front and rear) make for generally good handling. When I pushed it, there was a bit of body roll through the turns. But let’s be honest here, most consumers don’t drive like they’re on a test track. Nor should they.

The 77.4 kWh battery combined with the electric motors produce 429 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque. That allows the GV60 to go from 0 to 60 miles in about four seconds — certainly fast enough to be appreciated by EV aficionados. The battery range of 235 miles is low in this EV era. It’s certainly enough for the commute and daily driving needs, but some consumers may balk at spending the base price of $69,550 for an all-electric SUV with such a low range compared to its peers.

Advanced manufacturing startup Orbital Composites is teaming up with Virtus Solis Technologies to conduct a space-based solar power demonstration as soon as 2027.

The two companies say the mission will be a precursor to an in-space “megawatt-class” solar power installation by 2030, which could mark “a new chapter in renewable energy.”

Space-based solar power (SBSP) is not a new idea; the sun emits more energy than humans could possibly use at the point it reaches Earth, and much of this energy is reflected back into space. As opposed to solar power collected on the planet’s surface, which is subject to the day-night cycle and other limitations, like land use, SBSP proponents say they can provide continuous, abundant energy collection.

According to a press release from the two companies, it sounds like they have their work cut out for them. Solar panels for space are expensive, and the space-based power plant must eventually collect and transmit enough energy to make it square economically. The plan would not just demonstrate solar energy transmission, but also Orbital’s robotic in-space assembly capabilities, which come with their own suite of challenges.

But the vision is compelling, unlocking as it would a new source of abundant clean energy for Earth. Under the pilot, Virtus would deploy its 1.65-meter solar tiles in medium Earth orbit, which would then be robotically assembled into large arrays. The two companies are targeting a highly elliptical orbit called a Molniya orbit, which would keep at least one satellite in view of a ground station at all times.

After the solar power is collected, the spacecraft would covert it to microwaves, which would be transmitted to the ground. Once on the ground, it would be converted to electricity and available for transmission into the power grid or used directly.

“This collaboration is not just a milestone in renewable energy development; it’s a
commitment to leveraging space technology for Earth’s sustainable future,” the companies said in a press release. “The success of the pilot plant will validate the practicality of SBSP as a reliable and perpetual energy source.”