Beyond Earth Ventures

Beyond Earth Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in deep tech companies on Earth and in space. It backs start-ups in energy, robotics, space technology, computing and communications. The fund sees space as the next industrial frontier.

Its investment plan has two parts. The first is to find disruptions in established markets, with companies that use new technology or new business models to win an edge. The second is to find future category winners in fast-growing fields. Examples it names are humanoid robots, the lunar economy, satellite IoT connectivity and next-generation solar energy.

The fund points to three big trends. AI, advanced energy and automation have become scalable commercial platforms. At the same time, shifts in world politics and a return to local industry are sending large sums of money into strategic sectors. The fund says this gives a rare chance to back infrastructure-level companies early.

The team includes three PhDs and several serial founders. They have worked on deep tech projects together since they won the International Mars Society Mars Colony Prize in 2019. The partners combine venture capital, business, academic and technical skills. They are supported by an advisory board with experience in mergers and acquisitions, launch services, space strategy and work with NASA, the Department of Defense and XPRIZE.

The portfolio covers several fields. In energy, it includes Applied Atomics, which plans nuclear power plants beside large infrastructure sites, and Thea Energy, a fusion energy company. It also holds Tandem PV, a solar panel developer, and Zeno Power, which works on radioisotope power systems. In robotics and computing, it backs Origami Robotics and Efficient Computer. In space, it backs SkyFi, a marketplace for satellite imagery, Xona Space Systems, which builds a low Earth orbit satellite network as a GPS alternative, and Lunar Outpost, a maker of space robots for the Moon.

The partners say their wider experience includes more than 100 early stage companies in space and deep tech around the world.

Services

• Venture capital investment
• Deep tech investing
• Space tech investing
• Energy investing
• Robotics investing
• Compute and communications investing