satellite-deployment
(3)
Relativity Space
Relativity Space is an American aerospace company building rockets in a radically different way - by 3D printing the bulk of each vehicle with its proprietary Stargate metal printers and autonomous robotics. Founded in 2015, it became the first company to launch a largely 3D-printed rocket (Terran 1) in 2023, and is now focused on Terran R, a medium-to-heavy-lift, fully reusable launch vehicle aimed at the commercial and government markets. Under CEO Eric Schmidt, who took the helm in 2025, the company is also exploring orbital infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing.
Pierre-Damien Vaujour
Pierre-Damien Vaujour is the co-founder and CEO of Loft Orbital, the San Francisco-based company that turned satellite deployment from a multi-year aerospace engineering odyssey into something closer to provisioning a cloud server. A French aerospace engineer by training — ISAE-SUPAERO class of 2008, master's from University of Michigan — he cut his teeth at ESA, NASA, the Google Lunar X PRIZE, and was among the first hires at Spire Global before co-founding Loft Orbital in 2017 with Alex Greenberg and Antoine de Chassy. Under his leadership, the company reached unicorn status in January 2025 with a $170M Series C, surpassed $500M in cumulative bookings, and is now building the default AI execution layer for orbital infrastructure.
Ignacio Montero
Ignacio Belieres Montero is the founder and CEO of Epic Aerospace, a Los Altos, California-based company building orbit transfer vehicles and space tugs that move satellites from one orbit to another. A Stanford aerospace engineering graduate and Y Combinator S19 alum, he started building rockets at 16 and founded Epic Aerospace in 2017. The company's CHIMERA LEO 1 launched aboard SpaceX Transporter 6 in January 2023, and CHIMERA GEO 1 launched on SpaceX's Intuitive Machines-2 mission in February 2025, reaching 53 million kilometers from Earth. Epic Aerospace reached $4.2M in annual revenue in 2024 with a 28-person team, pioneering non-toxic hypergolic propulsion technology for cost-effective in-space transportation.