Besxar, a start-up founded by former OpenAI staffer Ashley Pilipiszyn, is developing a way to manufacture advanced semiconductor precursors in orbit, using the vacuum of space to avoid the costly clean-room infrastructure required by terrestrial chip fabs. Crucially, the company has secured a deal with SpaceX to test its technology aboard reused Falcon 9 rocket boosters, which travel to space and back to Earth more frequently than any other vehicle, offering a low-cost route to prove the concept before scaling up.

Besxar has raised almost $14 million, including a $9 million seed round led by Dauntless Ventures and Overture VC, and flew its first two prototype "fabships" on a July Starlink mission, successfully protecting wafer samples from contamination despite a data system malfunction in one canister. The firm plans further iterations over the next two years, aiming eventually to fly larger fabs aboard SpaceX's Starship, and to supply chipmakers with wafers for advanced chips used in data centres, robots and electric vehicles. It faces competition from rivals such as United Semiconductors and Space Forge, with future scale-up to hundreds or thousands of wafers per fab dependent on cheaper, more frequent rocket flights becoming available.