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Besxar is building an orbital semiconductor factory, one SpaceX rocket at a time

2 d ago

Besxar, a startup founded by former OpenAI staffer Ashley Pilipiszyn, is prototyping an orbital semiconductor factory using SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters, aiming to leverage space’s vacuum for advanced chip fabrication. The core news: Besxar has secured a deal with SpaceX to test its technology across a dozen booster flights, targeting a more cost-effective alternative to Earth’s costly clean rooms. The company raised nearly $14 million, including a $9 million seed round led by Dauntless Ventures and Overture VC, to develop small canisters called “fabships” that carry semiconductor materials into orbit. In July, two fabships flew on a Starlink mission, proving they could survive launch, protect wafer samples from contamination, and expose them to space’s vacuum. Despite a data system malfunction in one canister, the flown samples showed the least particulate matter compared to terrestrial wafers, a key milestone for scaling. Besxar plans to iterate over two years, eventually moving to larger fabs on SpaceX’s Starship. Next steps include heating wafers and depositing materials, with the goal of supplying leading chipmakers for advanced chips used in data centers, robots, and electric vehicles. Competitors like United Semiconductors and Space Forge face similar challenges in returning meaningful product volumes. Pilipiszyn emphasizes that cheap rockets—dependent on Starship or rivals like Rocket Lab and Stoke Space—are critical for scaling to hundreds or thousands of wafers per fab. “We believe there is a solid transport layer now, so we can focus on the application layer,” she said, targeting rapid return of products to market.