Investing in American Manufacturing: Shey Sabripour Talks CesiumAstro’s Ramp-Up

This episode of On orbit is brought to

you by Cesium Astro, a leading US

designer and manufacturer of

missionritical AI enabled

softwaredefined space and defense

systems. [music]

>> [music]

>> As a young electrical engineer at RC

Corporation, Shea Cyberpore was inspired

by the company's legacy of contributing

to space missions, and he wanted to make

his own mark by establishing a company

that builds technology in the US.

[music] Sheay went on to found CCM Astro

10 years ago, which is now at a pivotal

moment in its growth journey. He joins

on orbit this week after the company

recently raised $270 million and secured

XIM financing to build out manufacturing

capabilities [music] in Texas.

In this interview, Sheay shares his deep

passion for building in America and how

he sees a crucial link between strong

commercial competition, resilient supply

chains, and defense readiness. [music]

He also talks about Cesium Astro's

growth from providing softwaredefined

radios to now full-scale missions and

previews the launch of the company's

first satellite targeted for later this

year. [music] I'm Rachel Jwitt and

you're listening to On Orbit, the

podcast that asks, "What's our future in

space?"

>> Hi Shay, welcome to On Orbit.

>> Hi. Hi Rachel. It's pleasure to be with

you again. Thank you so much for the

time.

>> Yes. So super excited to have you on the

podcast in the leadup to to SAT show

later in March. We're talking at a

really exciting time for Cesium Astro.

So I know recently the company you

announced a large funding raise. You

guys raised $470 million in growth

capital. Is this would you say this is a

pivotal moment for Cesium Astro? Can you

talk a little bit about how you're

expanding your capabilities from

providing phase phase systems to now

you're doing end-to-end systems?

>> It really is uh it is a pivotal moment

absolutely uh and beyond just master and

honestly I think for the entire US

industrial base and defense industrial

base as a whole and uh and this funding

and this growth plan uh is a scale

moment for us. uh it validates uh the

the the incredible progress we've made

as a team, grown as a team uh from 9

years ago to today. Um we're a hardware

and software uh first company, meaning

that uh we actually like to build things

first before we go out uh too much with

it. And that's what we have done. We

have incredible products that uh are

being built at our smaller manufacturing

facility that's just about a half a mile

down the road from us. And now this

allows us to actually scale both our

engineering facilities uh and

manufacturing facility by about uh scale

of at least 10x uh in in west of Austin

here in uh Bave, Texas. Um beyond that,

it allows us to expand our facilities uh

in our Westminster, Colorado facility,

in our LA office. We now have locations

around the world uh in uh uh in in

Japan, in Tokyo, in in um uh in in

Taiwan, as well as in in Munich, uh in

London, and uh we'll we'll be soon

announcing other locations in the US,

including Washington DC as well as a

couple other locations.

>> That's really neat. You know, I didn't

know until recently that CZ Master that

you guys had a global presence as well.

So I think that's really exciting how

much you guys are expanding.

>> Yes. Yes indeed. Thank you. It's uh we

need to be a global company because uh

this investment around u communication

uh technologies for dual use

applications are global with us and all

of our allies around the world. So we

need to have this presence. Uh yeah.

Yeah.

>> So with that recent funding round, there

was also XIM financing specifically

aimed at increasing manufacturing in the

US. So talk to me about how you are, you

know, kind of what you're doing to

expand that manufacturing capability in

Texas.

>> Yes. Uh so as you know uh one of the

things that uh we've done methodically

from the beginning of the company is uh

to when when you want to be in satellite

communications or in general satellite

communications and ISR intelligence

surveillance reconnaissance these are

the sort of dual use applications of

satellites as you know in earth orbit.

Um uh there are multiple ways of doing

it. uh some people can decides that

decide that they want to be in the data

business and and then go buy a satellite

from somebody and then buy a payload

from somebody or launch it or just

outsource the whole thing. Uh we're a

company that started from the core

technology first meaning that we decided

that we're going to develop the core

payload technologies required for for

these kind of missions that I just

talked about

>> and we developed those from the

beginning of the company that allows you

to methodically

grow with the amount of funding that you

can reasonably raise. Uh so if you look

at our seed financing through our series

A and B and C, it has grown uh you've

reported on it several times. So with

that initial investment allow allowed us

to build the core technologies around

the software defined radio the phase

arrays and a whole bunch of other

technologies actually grow with it make

those into products that we sell and and

grew with it and now we've added things

around it um to to be able to get into

full missions. Now with that comes

bigger factories and bigger capabilities

and bigger supply chain. So that's where

our footprint has grown. um a couple of

M&As in the process. And so we got to a

point now where we needed to expand and

completely build not only just all of

our product lines in uh edge computing,

software defined radios, phase arrays,

antennas, hardware, processors, and you

name it, but also the satellites, attach

them together, build entire missions. So

that's what this XM

uh loan does for us. Uh it allows us to

um uh expend uh the capital that's

required and the facilities that are

required. Uh and we chose to actually

buy this facility because

uh there's so much capital that goes

into it. If just lease a facility and

after 10 years you want to rip it all

out, that's kind of hard. So just sort

of buying it for us was important and

we've invested in it and we're going to

grow it in West Texas at at our West

Austin, sorry, as our global

headquarters and manufacturing. But we

will also continue to uh to to invest in

our Westminster facility,

>> LA office and so on. Yeah.

>> Yeah. You've been very methodical about

growing the company. It's not like you

raised a ton of money at first and then

had to meet a lot of projections. It's

like I feel like Cesium Astro has been

very intentional about growing along the

way as the business has grown.

>> Thank you so much for noticing that. We

Yes, we're very proud of it. Uh you know

we we like to say that uh with less than

$160 million worth of venture capital

money in 9 years uh we have now won more

than $700 million in contracts just

after introducing our first products uh

over the past uh uh couple of years. And

uh and that's because we have been

methodical. We have uh we we always

wanted uh to make sure we have hardware

and software and firmware that comes out

of the box and works and works according

to what we promised. Build it, sell it,

grow from there, mature it, put it in

orbit, prove it out, and then grow from

there. And so we went from components to

subsystems to missions to to full

satellite missions now. And that really

actually worked out really well for us

both as a business and as as also as uh