Kam Ghaffarian isn’t a family identify. But not like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who made fortunes elsewhere first, Ghaffarian really acquired wealthy by capturing for the celebrities. His long-term plan? The first for-profit area station, opening by 2031.
By Giacomo Tognini, Forbes Staff
Robert Severi for Forbes
It’s a good query. The listing of corporations Ghaffarian has based reads just like the pages of a science fiction novel: Axiom Space is constructing the world’s first business area station in partnership with NASA and likewise designed the subsequent technology of astronaut spacesuits. (“The subsequent time you see astronauts strolling on the floor of the moon, they are going to be carrying Axiom Space spacesuits,” he provides.) Intuitive Machines builds lunar landers and can ship one to the moon’s south pole in January (climate allowing), one in all a number of launches it’s planning that may open the moon as much as business missions. Quantum Space is creating an area “superhighway” that may assist spacecraft refuel and journey within the area between the Earth and the moon. And again down on this planet, X-Energy is making small, superior (and meltdown-proof) nuclear reactors that may energy every little thing from a distant navy base to Dow’s 4,700-acre chemical substances plant on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Crazy, certainly. But all the companies have a standard aim, in accordance with Ghaffarian. “We should be a multi-planetary species and likewise be capable to go to different stars. But till then, we solely have one dwelling, proper?” he says, including, with a chuckle: “If you kind of summarize every little thing, [we need to] deal with our current dwelling and discover a new dwelling.”
The area business is dominated by larger-than-life moguls who’ve poured cash into rockets, rovers and rides into orbit. But, not like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, Ghaffarian, 65, is a uncommon instance of somebody who’s a billionaire largely due to his area pursuits, fairly than one who acquired into it after making his fortune. The key to that success? Culture, tradition, tradition, he says. But in a $546 billion enterprise that’s nonetheless pushed by the U.S. authorities, in accordance with the nonprofit Space Foundation, it’s really contracts, contracts, contracts.
“No one is healthier than Kam Ghaffarian at profitable, on a aggressive foundation, {dollars} from the U.S. authorities,” provides J. Clay Sell, the CEO of X-Energy and a former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Uncle Sam isn’t the one sport on the town, in fact. Ghaffarian already has a laundry listing of economic shoppers, together with the Cedars-Sinai well being system (for stem cell analysis in microgravity), champagne producer G.H. Mumm (bubbly designed to be tasted in area) and Japanese conglomerate Mitsui, which additionally has a partnership with Axiom Space. Then there’s overseas governments, equivalent to Canada and Saudi Arabia, plus people who can pay to entry area: the agency already accomplished two profitable, all-private crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS) with Musk’s SpaceX in April 2022 and final May, with the primary that includes three business astronauts and the second internet hosting two Saudi astronauts. As of August, the corporate claimed to have secured greater than $2.2 billion in buyer contracts.
That observe file has helped him win over buyers. In August, Axiom Space raised an extra $350 million in a funding spherical led by Saudi Arabia’s Aljazira Capital and South Korean pharma outfit Boryung; the agency is valued at $2.1 billion, in accordance with filings from one other backer, ARK Invest. That identical month, Intuitive Machines—which listed on Nasdaq by means of a clean verify agency in February—closed on a $20 million non-public funding, shoring up its funds after a rocky debut as a public firm. X-Energy, which counts Dow and personal fairness outfit Ares Management as buyers, was valued at roughly $1.1 billion in September. The latest, and smallest, a part of his fortune is Quantum Space, which raised $15 million in December. Altogether, Forbes estimates Ghaffarian is value $2.2 billion, thanks largely to his stakes in his area and nuclear startups. Not dangerous for an Iranian immigrant who landed in Washington, D.C. in 1976 with a $2,000 mortgage from his uncle to attend school.
“People consider Bezos, Musk, Branson and rightly so,” explains Chris Stott, the founder and CEO of Lonestar Data Holdings, which is partnering with Intuitive Machines to retailer information on the lunar floor. “They must also tack Kam Ghaffarian onto that listing as a result of he is doing as a lot, and he is been fairly sensible as a result of he is leveraging every little thing Jeff and Elon are doing.”
Ghaffarian could also be an asteroid in a giant galaxy in comparison with the likes of Musk and Bezos, who’re deploying billions of {dollars}. But he sees these magnates not as competitors a lot as companions: “I’ve a substantial amount of respect for Elon and [SpaceX president] Gwynne Shotwell, they’re superior associates. Jeff Bezos, the identical,” he says.
Like these different better-known area entrepreneurs, Ghaffarian has a lot bolder plans. The instant aim of constructing the primary ever business area station and the lunar landers is to decrease the prices of entry into area, a lot in the identical manner that SpaceX’s reusable rockets made it cheaper, simpler and sooner to launch missions. Think of a Tom Cruise flick shot on an precise area station or drug growth in zero gravity—each of which Ghaffarian’s corporations are serving to flip into actuality.
No one is healthier than Kam Ghaffarian at profitable, on a aggressive foundation, {dollars} from the U.S. authorities.
But that’s simply the beginning. Longer time period, he says: “Our final future is for the human race to grow to be interstellar.”
The first step is low Earth orbit, which means the area station. Then the moon, with landers and a human outpost. And then? “Technologies that may transcend our photo voltaic system.”
Ghaffarian’s out-of-this-world desires date again to his childhood within the historical metropolis of Isfahan, Iran, the place he cherished to gaze on the stars. On the evening of July 20, 1969, the then-11-year-old huddled across the black-and-white TV in his neighbor’s dwelling and watched as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin grew to become the primary human beings to stroll on the moon. “It was actually a transformational second,” he recollects. “That actually triggered for me that that is what I needed to do.”
The final American mission to the moon was in 1972. Four years later, Ghaffarian flew to Washington D.C. to review on the Catholic University of America with a $2,000 mortgage from his uncle. At evening, he would park automobiles in downtown D.C. to repay that debt whereas ending a double diploma in pc science and engineering. Ghaffarian graduated in 1980—one 12 months after the Iranian revolution—and by no means regarded again.
His first job out of faculty was at Virginia-based IT agency Compucare, all whereas persevering with his research with a level in electronics engineering and a grasp’s in data administration. Ghaffarian’s first foray within the area business got here in 1983 when he acquired a gig at aerospace big Lockheed, later shifting onto Ford Aerospace, the place he continued to work on contracts for NASA and the federal authorities. Then, in 1994, he struck out on his personal with Harold Stinger, whom he’d met at Lockheed. The pair based an organization referred to as Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies with the assistance of a federal program that helps minority-owned companies. Their first workplace was in Ghaffarian’s basement.
“We determined to open our personal firm doing the identical factor, mainly the federal government contracting enterprise,” he says. “I mortgaged a home and acquired $250,000 that I put collectively, and that’s how we acquired began.”
Another ability: his capability to coax NASA veterans to affix him within the non-public sector. Ghaffarian’s corporations are stacked with at the least 18 ex-NASA rockstars, bringing a wealth of presidency expertise but in addition convincing buyers that they’ll reach an more and more crowded market. In 2013, he teamed up with Stephen Altemus—the previous deputy director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which led the Apollo landings on the moon—to launch Intuitive Machines. Three years later, he satisfied Michael Suffredini, who managed NASA’s International Space Station program for a decade, to affix him in founding Axiom Space.
“I referred to as him and mentioned, ‘Kam, the one factor I understand how to do is construct and function an area station,’” Suffredini says of a cellphone name he had with Ghaffarian quickly after leaving NASA. “He mentioned, ‘okay, let me take into consideration that.’ He referred to as again the subsequent day and mentioned, ‘let’s go construct an area station.’”
“It’s crucial element and it clearly is a aggressive benefit,” says Kurt Scherer, managing associate at Washington, D.C.-based funding agency C5 Capital, which invested in each Axiom Space and his nuclear reactor agency X-Energy, which Ghaffarian based in 2009.
Ghaffarian’s observe file of profitable contracts from NASA—he claims that SGT had a win ratio of 80%, in comparison with an business common beneath 50%—helped Axiom Space and Intuitive Machines clinch main bids, from the spacesuits to the business lunar program. “This capability to bid on contracts and succeed is our secret sauce,” he provides. Even X-Energy is lively in area: Last 12 months, a three way partnership together with his Intuitive Machines gained a $5 million contract from NASA and the Department of Energy to design a conveyable nuclear reactor for the lunar floor.
All of those tasks require funding. That’s why Ghaffarian bought SGT in 2018 to publicly traded KBR for $355 million, giving him the money to push his different ventures ahead. “There are occasions that I believe perhaps I should not have bought, as a result of SGT was an unimaginable money circulate enterprise. But these are expertise corporations,” he says, pointing to Axiom Space, Intuitive Machines and X-Energy. “You’ve acquired to pour some huge cash into them.”
Seed funding solely goes thus far in area, and Ghaffarian managed to sway deep-pocketed buyers to commit the funds wanted to get these companies off the bottom. “Kam is among the only a few individuals who has the flexibility to see a giant, daring, bold future and is ready to get lots of people to imagine in that imaginative and prescient,” says Dakin Sloss, the founder and basic associate of Jackson, Wyoming-based VC agency Prime Movers Lab, which has invested in each Axiom Space and Quantum Space.
Public markets haven’t been as variety as non-public backers. X-Energy terminated its SPAC merger with Ares Acquisition Corp. in October, a month after revising its valuation downwards by 42%. Intuitive Machines’ inventory has fallen 70% since its inventory market debut, as buyers priced in delays to the agency’s first lunar launch. Initially scheduled for November—which might have made Ghaffarian the primary to carry America again to the moon since 1972—it was pushed again to January attributable to “pad congestion” at Cape Canaveral. (Another U.S. firm, Astrobotic, has its personal lander that’s anticipated to launch on Christmas Eve, doubtlessly beating Ghaffarian to the punch.)
And the competitors is fierce throughout the board: In the nuclear business, Bill Gates’ TerraPower, which is making a pilot reactor bigger than X-Energy’s, additionally gained a Department of Energy contract concurrently Ghaffarian’s agency in 2020. In the realm of area stations, Axiom Space will even must cope with Bezos’ Blue Origin and Sierra Space—based by billionaire couple Eren and Fatih Ozmen—plus business titans Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, that are partnering with Denver-based Voyager Space, and different startups together with crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb’s Vast. And in addition to Astrobotic and Blue Origin, Japanese startup iSpace is planning a second mission to the moon in 2024 after its first lander crashed into the lunar floor final April attributable to a software program glitch.
Ghaffarian is not fearful, envisioning a future the place there’s greater than sufficient enterprise to go round for a number of small nuclear reactors, area stations and corporations ferrying payloads to the moon. “Competition is wholesome. It makes you extra artistic and revolutionary,” he says. His buyers agree: “We wish to encourage opponents as a result of that is going to be a rising market,” provides C5 Capital’s Scherer.
The most bold Ghaffarian mission is the Limitless Space Institute, a nonprofit that he says he got here up with when he was at dwelling meditating and eager about the universe. (“What drives me is my spirituality and trusting God,” he says.) Based in Houston, the institute—additionally led by NASA veterans—companions with faculties and universities and funds analysis into applied sciences that might at some point allow interstellar journey, starting from fusion-powered spacecraft (theoretically doable, however removed from being a actuality) to “area drives, wormholes and area warps” (nonetheless totally conceptual).
“When you speak about 10, 15, 20 years from now, my hope is that we’ve got an area metropolis, a spot the place individuals can really go and reside,” he says. “That can be a very nice constructing block towards additional area exploration for human beings.”
To Ghaffarian, the motivation for constructing an area station and lunar landers was by no means simply to get wealthy—regardless that his investments in them have helped make him very rich.
“I did not wish to be the richest man within the cemetery and I did not need my life to be nearly making more cash,” he says, reflecting on when he bought his first enterprise. “I needed my life to be extra about making a distinction, altering the world for the higher.”
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