Year: 2020

Casa Verde Capital, the investment fund co-founded by cannabis connoisseur Snoop Dogg (also known as Calvin Broadus), has closed on $100 million for its second investment fund, according to documents filed with the SEC.

The fund, whose managing director, Karan Wadhera declined to comment for this article, has managed to raise more cash just as the market for cannabis-related products seems poised for another period of expansion.

“What happened to the public perception of the cannabis industry is not too dissimilar to the dotcom bubble of the late ’90s, where there was a lot of hype — a lot of it driven by public companies — and a lot of speculative trading and valuations that weren’t really founded in reality. [We’re talking about] projections multiple years out into the future, and then crazy revenue multiples on top of that,” Wadhera said of the last bust when he spoke to TechCrunch in July. “Things just got really frothy, and that eventually burst, and last April or May was sort of the apex of that moment. It’s when things started to trade off. And it’s been those names, the public names in particular, that have been hit particularly hard.”

Since then, the industry has come roaring back.

“Sitting here today, four-plus months into COVID, cannabis has really proved itself to be a non-cyclical industry. Cannabis has been deemed an essential business everywhere across the U.S. We had record sales in March, April and May, and the trend has continued,” Wadhera said in July. “And now that we are getting into an environment where governments are going to be looking for additional sources of tax revenue, the potential urgency around cannabis legalization is going to be there, which is going to be massively positive for the industry.”

There’s no indication of the target for the new venture capital fund, but with the new fundraising, Casa Verde more than doubles the size of its initial investment vehicle.

Since Broadus, Wadhera and a third partner and the founder of Cashmere Agency and Stampede Management Ted Chung launched their debut fund in 2018, weed businesses have endured a roller-coaster business cycle of boom and bust.

In spite of those market vagaries, Casa Verde has managed to build a portfolio that is now worth at least $200 million, according to people with knowledge of the firm. That money has come through several special purpose vehicles and other fundraising mechanisms raised alongside the flagship fund.

The overall market for cannabis and cannabinoid derivatives is expected to hit $34 billion by 2025 according to an analyst report seen by TechCrunch from the investment bank Cowen.

With Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota all passing adult-use cannabis legalization measures in their states, the investment bank predicted roughly 30 percent growth to their total addressable market estimates.

For its part, Casa Verde has always taken a broad view on the potential addressable market that cannabis and its chemical compounds could capture.

Nowhere is that more on view than in the firm’s latest investment in the sleep company, Proper.

“[Cannabis] is an input as well and its use case will go beyond how people think of cannabis stigmatically,” Wadhera said. “At its core, [Proper] is a company that’s helping us target this sleep epidemic. We think CBD and cannabis at large can play a big role in addressing that in a way that traditional products haven’t been able to.”

And what’s true for sleep is true for a number of other different applications as well, Wadhera has said in the past.

Casa Verde has already invested heavily across the pure-play opportunities in cannabis, with investments spanning delivery, supply chain logistics, brands, and retail.

But the health benefits that cannabinoids could have for all kinds of ailments open up a much larger market — as do the broad consumer opportunities should Congress accede to the wishes of more than 60 percent of the American electorate and legalize recreational cannabis use nationally.

And, as Wadhera told us in July, a Biden administration presents a potentially much more positive regulatory environment for the industry than the previous Trump administration did.

“I think Biden will be very helpful. He has laid out many of the things that he wants, and [while] he isn’t taking it as far as full-scale legalization, he’s certainly in favor of full-scale decriminalization, [meaning] letting states have full authority over what happens with their businesses, and also the rescheduling of cannabis down from the current Schedule 1 level,” Wadhera had said. “So all of that will be incredibly helpful and will bring a lot more players who will feel comfortable investing in the space and, potentially, acquiring some of these businesses, too.”

Casa Verde Capital, the investment fund co-founded by cannabis connoisseur Snoop Dogg (also known as Calvin Broadus), has closed on $100 million for its second investment fund, according to documents filed with the SEC.

The fund, whose managing director, Karan Wadhera declined to comment for this article, has managed to raise more cash just as the market for cannabis-related products seems poised for another period of expansion.

“What happened to the public perception of the cannabis industry is not too dissimilar to the dotcom bubble of the late ’90s, where there was a lot of hype — a lot of it driven by public companies — and a lot of speculative trading and valuations that weren’t really founded in reality. [We’re talking about] projections multiple years out into the future, and then crazy revenue multiples on top of that,” Wadhera said of the last bust when he spoke to TechCrunch in July. “Things just got really frothy, and that eventually burst, and last April or May was sort of the apex of that moment. It’s when things started to trade off. And it’s been those names, the public names in particular, that have been hit particularly hard.”

Since then, the industry has come roaring back.

“Sitting here today, four-plus months into COVID, cannabis has really proved itself to be a non-cyclical industry. Cannabis has been deemed an essential business everywhere across the U.S. We had record sales in March, April and May, and the trend has continued,” Wadhera said in July. “And now that we are getting into an environment where governments are going to be looking for additional sources of tax revenue, the potential urgency around cannabis legalization is going to be there, which is going to be massively positive for the industry.”

There’s no indication of the target for the new venture capital fund, but with the new fundraising, Casa Verde more than doubles the size of its initial investment vehicle.

Since Broadus, Wadhera and a third partner and the founder of Cashmere Agency and Stampede Management Ted Chung launched their debut fund in 2018, weed businesses have endured a roller-coaster business cycle of boom and bust.

In spite of those market vagaries, Casa Verde has managed to build a portfolio that is now worth at least $200 million, according to people with knowledge of the firm. That money has come through several special purpose vehicles and other fundraising mechanisms raised alongside the flagship fund.

The overall market for cannabis and cannabinoid derivatives is expected to hit $34 billion by 2025 according to an analyst report seen by TechCrunch from the investment bank Cowen.

With Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota all passing adult-use cannabis legalization measures in their states, the investment bank predicted roughly 30 percent growth to their total addressable market estimates.

For its part, Casa Verde has always taken a broad view on the potential addressable market that cannabis and its chemical compounds could capture.

Nowhere is that more on view than in the firm’s latest investment in the sleep company, Proper.

“[Cannabis] is an input as well and its use case will go beyond how people think of cannabis stigmatically,” Wadhera said. “At its core, [Proper] is a company that’s helping us target this sleep epidemic. We think CBD and cannabis at large can play a big role in addressing that in a way that traditional products haven’t been able to.”

And what’s true for sleep is true for a number of other different applications as well, Wadhera has said in the past.

Casa Verde has already invested heavily across the pure-play opportunities in cannabis, with investments spanning delivery, supply chain logistics, brands, and retail.

But the health benefits that cannabinoids could have for all kinds of ailments open up a much larger market — as do the broad consumer opportunities should Congress accede to the wishes of more than 60 percent of the American electorate and legalize recreational cannabis use nationally.

And, as Wadhera told us in July, a Biden administration presents a potentially much more positive regulatory environment for the industry than the previous Trump administration did.

“I think Biden will be very helpful. He has laid out many of the things that he wants, and [while] he isn’t taking it as far as full-scale legalization, he’s certainly in favor of full-scale decriminalization, [meaning] letting states have full authority over what happens with their businesses, and also the rescheduling of cannabis down from the current Schedule 1 level,” Wadhera had said. “So all of that will be incredibly helpful and will bring a lot more players who will feel comfortable investing in the space and, potentially, acquiring some of these businesses, too.”

A coalition of companies have filed an amicus brief in support of a legal case brought by WhatsApp against Israeli intelligence firm NSO Group, accusing the company of using an undisclosed vulnerability in the messaging app to hack into at least 1,400 devices, some of which were owned by journalists and human rights activists.

NSO develops and sells governments access to its Pegasus spyware, allowing its nation state customers to target and stealthily hack into the devices of its targets. Spyware like Pegasus can track a victim’s location, read their messages and listen to their calls, steal their photos and files, and siphon off private information from their device. The spyware is often installed by tricking a target into opening a malicious link, or sometimes by exploiting never-before-seen vulnerabilities in apps or phones to silently infect the victims with the spyware. The company has drawn ire for selling to authoritarian regimes, like Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Last year, WhatsApp found and patched a vulnerability that it said was being abused to deliver the government-grade spyware, in some cases without the victim knowing. Months later, WhatsApp sued NSO to understand more about the incident, including which of its government customers was behind the attack.

NSO has repeatedly disputed the allegations, but was unable to convince a U.S. court to drop the case earlier this year. NSO’s main legal defense is that it is afforded legal immunities because it acts on behalf of governments.

But a coalition of tech companies has sided with WhatsApp, and are now asking the court to not allow NSO to claim or be subject to immunity.

Microsoft (including its subsidiaries LinkedIn and GitHub), Google, Cisco, VMware, and the Internet Association, which represents dozens of tech giants including Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, warned that the development of spyware and espionage tools — including hoarding the vulnerabilities used to deliver them — make ordinary people less safe and secure, and also runs the risk of these tools falling into the wrong hands.

In a blog post, Microsoft’s customer security and trust chief Tom Burt said NSO should be accountable for the tools it builds and the vulnerabilities it exploits.

“Private companies should remain subject to liability when they use their cyber-surveillance tools to break the law, or knowingly permit their use for such purposes, regardless of who their customers are or what they’re trying to achieve,” said Burt. “We hope that standing together with our competitors today through this amicus brief will help protect our collective customers and global digital ecosystem from more indiscriminate attacks.”

A spokesperson for NSO did not immediately comment.

We look at the tech implications of the new stimulus bill, Lockheed Martin makes a big rocket engine acquisition and Google Cloud expands. This is your Daily Crunch for December 21, 2020.

The big story: Stimulus bill includes money for broadband and energy

The $900 billion pandemic relief bill that lawmakers agreed on over the weekend includes a number of provisions that could have a significant impact on the tech industry. For one thing, it commits $7 billion to increase broadband access, including $50 monthly payments to help qualifying families pay for broadband.

The bill also includes $1.9 billion to “rip and replace” equipment from Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei. And there’s $35.2 billion for energy initiatives, with photovoltaics, new transportation technologies and energy efficiency technologies looking like the big winners.

Lawmakers from both parties have reached an agreement in principle on the stimulus, but it still needs final approval from Congress and President Donald Trump.

The tech giants

Lockheed Martin acquires rocket engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.4B as space heats up — Aerojet Rocketdyne is headquartered in El Segundo, California and has nearly 5,000 employees.

Google expands its cloud with new regions in Chile, Germany and Saudi Arabia — In total, Google Cloud currently operates 24 regions with 73 availability zones.

IBM snags Nordcloud to add multi-cloud consulting expertise — Nordcloud has 500 consultants certified in AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Bolt adds $75M to its Series C, as the battle to rule online checkout continues — Bolt offers four connected services: checkout, payments, user accounts and fraud protection.

OneTrust nabs $300M Series C on $5.1B valuation to expand privacy platform — The company has raised $710 million in a mere 18 months, some of it during a pandemic.

After lockdowns boost gaming marketplace Eneba, it raises $8M from Practica and InReach — Launched in 2018 by two Lithuanian school friends, Eneba says it has attracted 26 million unique users.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Three VCs discuss space junk and what else they’re betting on right now — VCs discuss the dangers of orbital debris, the merits of space manufacturing and how they’d rate the U.S. government when it comes to fostering space-related innovations.

Fintech startups are increasingly focusing on profitability — Some companies tore up their 2020 roadmap to build lasting businesses.

Despite economic downturn, space startup funding defies gravity — More from TC Sessions: Space 2020.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Dozens of journalists’ iPhones hacked with NSO ‘zero-click’ spyware, says Citizen Lab — Targeted journalists include London-based Rania Dridi and at least 36 journalists, producers and executives working for the Al Jazeera news agency.

Dedicated commercial human in-space operations are coming sooner than you may realize — Darrell Etherington writes that the number of humans actively working beyond Earth’s atmosphere is about to start growing at a potentially exponential rate.

Original Content podcast: The pandemic thriller ‘Songbird’ could have been a lot worse — It’s not good, though!

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

The demise of the Apple car, the technology giant’s not-so-secret secret project, was perhaps overstated. Apple’s so-called Project Titan, which last year reduced the team by some 200 employees, is not only alive, it has plans to produce an electric passenger vehicle with “breakthrough battery technology” and automated vehicle technology by 2024, according to a report from Reuters.

It’s unclear what the vehicle will look like, who will be the manufacturing partner or if the self-driving system that Apple has been working on will be part of the car or offered as a software product to other companies. The Reuters article builds off of another report from Taiwanese media outlet Economic Daily Times, which describes Apple ramping up orders for auto parts and components from suppliers in the country. Together, the reports offer confirmation that Apple, while quiet and with a smaller team, hasn’t ditched the idea of a car after all.

Reuters sources describe this as a passenger vehicle, which would put Apple in a different category than autonomous vehicle technology companies like Waymo that are trying to commercialize robotaxi services. (Waymo has said that it is also interested in licensing its AV tech for passenger vehicles, but it’s not the company’s first priority.)

Apple’s Project Titan is led by Doug Field, who returned to the company in 2018 after a stint at electric automaker Tesla. Field, who was senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, was one of the key executives behind the launch of the Model 3. Under Field’s leadership, it appears the Apple car might square off more directly with Tesla than say Alphabet’s Waymo.

Here in the final few working days of 2020, a surprising number of new unicorns have come to light. The mad scramble that investors are seeing in seed-stage startups appears to be reflected across the later stages as well.

That deal-making is still alive is not a surprise, but the cadence at which the market is crowning new unicorns is slightly startling, given the time of year. I’ve given up expecting a slowdown in venture capital, but I did anticipate some deceleration in huge rounds and resulting unicorn valuations this close to Christmas.

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This morning after contrasting a PitchBook-derived $500 million, post-money valuation for Bolt’s Series C that its CEO had said was roughly doubled in its Series C1, TechCrunch discovered that the online checkout software company likely landed a new valuation right around the unicorn mark. Bolt’s PR team declined to share a new valuation or grade our math, saying that its framing was “fine.”

One new unicorn — or near-unicorn, perhaps — was not enough for the day. The Information broke news this afternoon that Ironclad, which sells contract management software, put together a round worth “at least $100 million,” valuing the company at “more than $950 million.” Akin to Bolt, this unicorn-or-just-under valuation is also a doubling or better from its last private round.

In fact, two new unicorns were insufficient: a third company also made the mark today, namely Qualia, which trumpeted the valuation achievement in a release. Qualia builds real estate software.

Three unicorns in one day is busy. To see three come to light on December 21st is a little bonkers.

And they are hardly the only startups we’ve seen sprout horns and race about on four legs in recent days. There’s Boom, Zenoti and BigID also in the last week or so. That’s at least six new unicorns since roughly the mid-point of December. Wild!

Let’s talk about the rounds and see what we can learn from them.

Hello, new unicorns

Starting with Bolt, there are a few lessons for us to take away. First: not every company that secures a unicorn (or a near-unicorn valuation) wants to make noise about it. We’ve known this, but the company’s currently coy attitude underscores the point. Second from Bolt is that inside investors are more than willing to crown unicorns in their own portfolio.

According to CEO Ryan Breslow, after his company raised its Series C, the round’s lead investor offered the company another term sheet. But WestCap was not its only lead. General Atlantic came in as well, giving the $75 million investment two leads. Bolt had already decided to call its new round a Series C1 before General Atlantic entered the deal, the addition of which brought $15 million to what was previously a $60 million investment.

Bolt’s round fits neatly into a number of trends that we’ve been watching: inside rounds being bullish not bearish in 2020, the fastest-growing companies raising two rounds this year and the incredible focus by venture investors into startups that were not merely surviving COVID-19, but benefiting from how it shook up the market.

Turning to Ironclad, around $100 million at around a $950 million valuation is about as basic as a unicorn round can get. And because it has been more than a year since its last round, you might think that there is not that much to learn in its case.

Peloton has announced that it intends to acquire Precor, one of the world’s largest suppliers of commercial fitness equipment. You probably recognize the Precor brand name if you’ve ever spent time in a hotel or standalone commercial gym, which is exactly why Peloton making this purchase makes a ton of sense at this particular time for the hot home workout brand.

The Precor acquisition will be made via a deal that’s valued at a total of $420 million, and in addition to expanding its commercial business, this also helps Peloton bring on a lot more manufacturing capability in a time when its order queue for its Tread and Bike hardware is deeper than ever, thanks to the increase in demand resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Precor already maintains a significant U.S.-based manufacturing operation, as well as dedicated research and development teams and facilities. In total, Peloton says in a press release that it’ll be adding 625,000 square feet of manufacturing facility in the U.S., between Precor facilities in both Whitsett, North Carolina, and Woodinville, Washington.

While the near-term use of the acquisition, which is set to close in 2021 if it meets all approvals, is to speed up delivery times for customers of existing equipment, long-term this deal sets Peloton up nicely for greater commercial market expansion – once the commercial market returns to growth. While the pandemic has been a clear boon for Peloton’s at-home equipment and fitness subscription service, it’s also been devastating for gym chains and hoteliers, meaning that it’s likely Precor’s primary business was taking a considerable hit over the past few months.

This is the largest deal that Peloton has made thus far, but it’s possible it picked up Precor for a relative bargain; Precor owner Anta Sports was said to have been seeking a potential sale fo the company for around $500 million last November. Peloton will be installing Precor President Rob Barker as GM of Peloton Commercial as part of the new deal, and that should help it accelerate the infiltration of its connected equipment in commercial gyms globally once people feel more comfortable about returning to them safely post-pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic might have upended the global economy, but according to Meagan Crawford at Spacefund and Chris Moran with Lockheed Martin Ventures, it didn’t dampen investment in space startups.

Spacefund research conducted earlier this year found that there is almost no correlation between the global economy and the space industry, said Crawford, a managing partner at the VC firm, last Thursday at TC Sessions: Space 2020. Crawford and Moran both agreed that interest and investment in space will increase as more startups have successful exits.

“We looked back historically over the last decade and a little bit more, and it turns out that even during the 2008-2009 economic downturn, the space industry continued to grow at 7% per year,” Crawford said, adding that they saw almost no correlation between the performance of the Global S&P 1200 and the space industry.

“I think a lot of this has to do with a big portion of the industry coming from government budgets, which provides a lot of stability even in economically rough times, as well as the industry being in such high demand and going through such a high-growth phase right now that even the pandemic couldn’t really slow it down,” she said.

Early-stage investments did suffer at the beginning of the year, Moran noted after the event, but added that it appeared to be temporary.

“Firms were circling the wagons on their portfolios, in-person incubator programs went on hiatus, so there were fewer early-stage companies out there and less money for those companies,” he said, adding that Pitchbook data confirmed LMVC’s suspicions and showed a 25% to 27% drop in new company formation over that time.

Since September, LMVC has seen a spike in new companies. Meanwhile, incubators and accelerators have adapted to COVID-19 restrictions, Zoom made face-to-face meetings easy and life “as usual” started back up again, Moran added.

Exits are driving investments

The space industry has enjoyed a honeymoon period with hundreds of startups popping up in the past five to seven years following SpaceX’s success. Moran said this unabashed growth period will continue for a few years before narrowing.

“So like any any industry in VC, you see a lot of people jump in and then as business models collide and the need to generate some sustainable business happens there’s a lot of winnowing and narrowing of the field,” Moran said. “We’re probably still in that growth period, but I imagine over the next few years, we’ll start seeing this winnowing and really focus on the folks who have a technology and a business model that will be successful long term.”

Right now, the entire industry is funded on private capital, said Moran, who predicted investing is going to grow for some time as long as people see the excitement and promise of the industry. He added that easy access to public markets — notably the rise in mergers with special purpose acquisition companies — could drive even more money into space.

The security industry is reverberating with news of the FireEye breach and the announcement that the U.S. Treasury Department, DHS and potentially several other government agencies, were hacked due (in part, at least) to a supply chain attack on SolarWinds.

These breaches are reminders that nobody is immune to risk or being hacked. I’ve no doubt that both FireEye and SolarWinds take security very seriously, but every company is subject to the same reality: Compromise is inevitable.

The way I judge these events is not by whether someone is hacked, but by how much effort the adversary needed to expend to turn a compromise into a meaningful breach. We’ve heard FireEye put effort and execution into the protection of sensitive tools and accesses, forcing the Russians to put stunning effort into a breach.

More evidence of FireEye’s dedication to security can be seen by the speed with which its moved to publish countermeasure tools. While the Solarwinds breach has had stunning immediate fallout, I’ll reserve opining about SolarWinds until we learn details of the whole event, because while a breach that traverses the supply should be exceedingly rare, they’ll never be stopped entirely.

All this is to say, this news isn’t surprising to me. Security organizations are a top adversarial target, and I would expect a nation-state like Russia to go to great lengths to impede FireEye’s ability to protect its customers. FireEye has trusted relationships with many enterprise organizations, which makes it a juicy target for espionage activities. SolarWinds, with its lengthy list of government and large enterprise customers, is a desirable target for an adversary looking to maximize its efforts.

Image Credits: David Wolpoff

Hack Solarwinds once, and Russia gains access to many of its prized customers. This isn’t the first time a nation-state adversary has gone through the supply chain. Nor is it likely to be the last.

For security leaders, this is a good opportunity to reflect on their reliance and trust in technology solutions. These breaches are reminders of unseen risk debt: Organizations have a huge amount of potential harm built up through their providers that typically isn’t adequately hedged against.

People need to ask the question, “What happens when my MSSP, security vendor or any tech vendor is compromised?” Don’t look at the Solarwinds hack in isolation. Look at every one of your vendors that can push updates into your environment.

No single tool can be relied on to never fail.

You need to expect that FireEye, SolarWinds and every other vendor in your environment will eventually get compromised. When failures occur, you need to know: “Will the remainder of my plans be sufficient, and will my organization be resilient?”

What’s your backup plan when this fails? Will you even know?

If your security program is critically dependent on FireEye (Read: It’s the primary security platform), then your security program is dependent on FireEye implementing, executing and auditing its own program, and you and your management need to be okay with that.

Often, organizations purchase a single security solution to cover multiple functions, like their VPN, firewall, monitoring solution and network segmentation device. But then you have a single point of failure. If the box stops working (or is hacked), everything fails.

From a structural standpoint, it’s hard to have something like SolarWinds be a point of compromise and not have wide-reaching effects. But if you trusted Solarwind’s Orion platform to talk to and integrate with everything in your environment, then you took the risk that a breach like this wouldn’t happen. When I think about utilizing any tool (or service) one question I always ask is, “When this thing fails, or is hacked, how will I know and what will I do?”

Sometimes the answer might be as simple as, “That’s an insurance-level event,” but more often I’m thinking about other ways to get some signal to the defenders. In this case, when Solarwinds is the vector, will something else in my stack still give me an indication that my network is spewing traffic to Russia?

Architecting a resilient security program isn’t easy; in fact, it’s a really hard problem to solve. No product or vendor is perfect, that’s been proven time and again. You need to have controls layered on top of each other. Run through “what happens” scenarios. Organizations focusing on defense in depth, and defending forward, will be in a more resilient position. How many failures does it take for a hacker to get to the goods? It should take more than one mishap for critical data to end up in Russia’s hands.

It’s critical to think in terms of probability and likelihood and put controls in place to prevent accidental changes to baseline security. Least privilege should be the default, and lots of segmenting should prevent rapid lateral motion. Monitoring and alerting should trigger responses, and if any wild deviations occur, the fail safes should activate. Run a red-team security program, see how well you stack up and learn from your mistakes.

Breaches of this magnitude are going to happen. If they’re something your organization needs to be resilient against, then it’s best to be prepared for them.

If you’ve ever heard someone refer to the idea of ‘working in space,’ you’d be forgive for thinking they were describing a science fiction plot. But the number of humans actively working beyond Earth’s atmosphere – and living significant chunks of their lives there, too – is about to start growing at a potentially exponential rate. Given how small that population is now, the growth might look slow at first – but it’s happening soon, and plans are in place to help it start ramping up quickly.

The main company leading those plans in the near-term is Axiom Space, a private space station service provider, and eventual operator. Axiom is founded and led by people with International Space Station experience and expertise, and the company already operates R&D missions on behalf of private clients on the ISS with the help of NASA astronauts. It’s planning to begin shuttling entire flights of private astronauts to the station starting in 2021, and it’s also building a new, commercial space station to ultimately replace the ISS on orbit once that one is decommissioned.

Axiom Space’s Chief Business Office Amir Blachman joined us at TC Sessions: Space last week, on a panel that included NASA Chief of Exploration and Mission Planning, Sierra Nevada Corporation Senior Vice President and former astronaut Janet Kavandi, as well as Space Exploration Architecture (SEArch+) co-founder Melodie Yashar. The panel was focused on how public and private entities are preparing for a (relatively near) future in which humans spend more time off Earth – and further away from it, too.

“It’s now it’s, it’s been now for a couple years already,” Blachman said, in response to a question about how far off humans beyond NASA astronauts living in space actually is. “Axiom, sends crews to the International Space Station today on our own missions, while we’re building the new commercial space station that will succeed ISS when it’s decommissioned. Our first mission with a crew of four astronauts launches 12 months from now, and the four crew members have already gone through medical, they’ve done their suit fittings, we’ve already integrated our medical operations and training team with our launch provider. We’ll launch that crew in 2021, another crew in 2022, two crews and 2023, four in 2024 – and it grows from there.”

Both Blachman and Meranci talked about the importance of automation and robotic systems on both Axiom’s future commercial space stations, and on NASA’s future habitats on the lunar surface, and on the lunar Gateway that will remain in orbit around the Moon and act as a staging ground for lunar missions.

“ISS was meant to be tended all the time,” Meranci said. “It’s not meant to be an uncrewed station. And while the flight controllers on the ground do a lot of the actual operation of it, it’s meant to have people there to perform maintenance. We don’t have that luxury, when you start talking about the lunar architecture, the Gateway will be tended only when the crew arrives, and the stuff on the surface will be tended only for, you know, a week at first and then longer over time. But you still want to have all of those things be capable of doing useful science or useful exploration even without the crew. So the ability to do tele robotics, maintain things via ground command and things like that so that when the crew arrives, they can just throw the hatch open and get to work would be the ideal state.”

We’ve been working under the assumption that these habitats and critical infrastructure on Mars, and now more recently on the Moon should be constructed, and should be thought of as being constructed, as autonomously as possible,” Yashar added. “So we typically design for precursor missions, which would happen even before a crew arrives, hoping that almost all of the systems through construction, materials, excavation, materials handling, and all of the other systems that we’ve been looking at would more or less happen as autonomously as possible.”

Kavandi, too, echoed the sentiments of the others with regards to the degree to which modern human space systems will incorporate automation. I asked whether that would introduce complexity, but she said that rather, it should accomplish the opposite. Somewhat ironically, the path forward for human activity in space actually involves a lot less human activity – at least when it comes to the business of operating and maintaining in-space infrastructure.

“Advanced technology thing can sometimes add simplicity,” “As we’ve increased our capabilities over the years, with computers, for instance, they’ve become easier to use, not harder to use. The objective is to try to minimize crew time and crew maintenance so that you can concentrate your time, your time for doing research, or whatever it is that you’re supposed to do up there, whatever your mission happens to be. So the more we can simplify the interfaces, the more that we can have automation, where the crew only has to intervene when something is going wrong, but generally thingsgo smoothly, and they don’t have to do anything, that is an ideal situation. And in that case, you have a lot more free time available to then actually do the work that you’re up there for.”