The story of humanity’s expansion into space serves as one of the great engineering triumphs of our time. We have made great strides on the physical side of this frontier. Thanks to launch providers like SpaceX, we now possess reliable, recurring access to orbit. Yet, as we look at the broader space economy, a fundamental piece remains missing. We lack the financial and market infrastructure required to move capital, structure contracts, and enable the commerce that will define the next century of off-planet activity.
This is why I am thrilled that GV is leading the seed investment in Nebex.
Nebex is building the economic operating system for space. They are building the missing layer for space transactions and deals: connecting buyers, suppliers, and capital markets through a centralized exchange. By providing the legal and financial facilitation necessary for complex, cross-border space transactions, Nebex is bringing modern financial efficiency to an industry that has been stuck in a closed-loop barter system for decades.
Through the 1980s and 1990s diplomats and engineers built the International Space Station on a barter system, hardware for crew time, payload space for launch services, that kept the complexity of money out of international cooperation. This model served a purpose during the early, high-stakes era of space exploration. However, the model has proven inefficient as the market has matured. Today, while thousands of founders now build innovative satellites, propulsion systems, and data platforms, they struggle to navigate a landscape where government buyers still operate on this fragmented, decades-old framework.
The Nebex platform is the creation of Tejpaul Bhatia, a founder uniquely positioned to solve this problem. Tejpaul brings deep, hands-on experience in the mechanics of the space economy, having previously served as CEO of Axiom Space and led over $1B in commercial space deals. He knows how to move fast in high-friction environments, having bridged the gap between sovereign government requirements and the fast-paced needs of the commercial space sector.
Tejpaul has assembled a team that compliments his expertise. He is joined by co-founder Anand Subramanian, a veteran of ad-exchange marketplaces, and Manlio Di Stefano, a former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for Italy who possesses deep insight into the geopolitical realities of space diplomacy. Together, they are building the financial backbone that will finally unlock the potential of the commercial space economy.
The future of this space economy will not just be about rockets, orbital data centers or space manufacturing; it will be about the business models that bring success. For these markets to scale, they need infrastructure that can aggregate global supply and demand, enabling transparent price discovery and standardized contracts.
We are creating a world where money moves through the space economy with the same fluidity we expect from every other major industry on Earth. That remains the core of our thesis with Nebex.
You can watch my full conversation with Tejpaul above, where we discuss the technical hurdles of building a space exchange, the role of AI in modeling these markets, and how we plan to empower a new generation of founders building the future above us.
