Stock Pick - The Investment Journal

SpaceX dominates the global launch business and nobody else is even close…

Its reusable Falcon 9 rockets transformed the economics of getting to orbit, dramatically lowering costs while increasing launch frequency.

And SpaceX now sends more payload into space than the national programs of most major countries combined.

And that’s because it solved one of the biggest problems holding back the space economy:

Cost.

But it hasn’t solved another one…

Time.

And that could create a huge opportunity for a much smaller company (and for investors who get in early)…

Cheap Doesn’t Always Mean Fast

SpaceX has made space launch cheaper and more routine than ever. But sending something into orbit is still nothing like booking a flight…

Customers often have to reserve space well in advance, deliver payloads weeks before launch, wait for the right mission, and hope weather, range availability, technical issues, and orbital requirements all cooperate.

And SpaceX’s rideshare program perfectly illustrates the problem…

It offers remarkably affordable access to orbit.

But its sun-synchronous rideshare missions generally launch about once every four months.

And customers typically have to deliver payloads to the launch site roughly 30 days ahead of liftoff.

For many companies, that’s fine. But for others, it could be a deal-breaker…

Imagine operating equipment in orbit and needing a replacement component quickly.

Or running a microgravity experiment tied to a narrow biological window.

Or being a defense agency that suddenly needs another sensor overhead.

Those customers may not care about saving another 10% or 20% on launch costs.

They may care far more about whether they can launch this week instead of next quarter.

And that’s the next problem the space economy needs to solve…

Space Needs Air Freight

It helps if you think about SpaceX as the container ship of space…

Container ships are incredibly efficient because they move enormous amounts of cargo cheaply.

But we still have airplanes. Why?

Because sometimes speed matters more than scale.

FedEx doesn’t compete with container ships by carrying more cargo. It solves a different problem…

It gets smaller packages where they need to go quickly.

The space economy will eventually need the same thing.

And that’s where a little known firm called Starfighters Space (NYSE American: FJET) gets very interesting…

Don’t Call Them Missiles

You see, Starfighters operates a commercial fleet of F-104 Starfighter aircraft capable of sustained Mach 2+ flight.

And its STARLAUNCH system is designed to use those aircraft as the first stage of a space launch…

Instead of firing a massive rocket from sea level, an F-104 carries a smaller projectile to roughly 45,000 feet before releasing it.

The rocket then ignites and continues toward space.

And that changes the launch equation….

The aircraft is reusable.

It can take off from a runway.

It can move to a favorable launch location.

It begins above a significant portion of the atmosphere.

And, most importantly, it could potentially give customers much more control over when they launch.

You see, Starfighters isn’t trying to replace Falcon 9…

It’s trying to make small-payload launches more responsive.

And that distinction could be enormously valuable…

From Months to Hours

Because the eventual goal is something closer to on-demand access to space…

Instead of waiting months for an available rideshare mission, a customer could theoretically schedule a launch much more like an aircraft operation.

And that would reduce one of the last major friction points standing between companies and space…

Because cheaper transportation doesn’t just make existing businesses more profitable.

It creates businesses that couldn’t exist before.

Railroads did it. Highways did it. Commercial aviation did it. The internet did it…

Once people could move goods, people, or information faster and more reliably, entrepreneurs invented entirely new industries around that capability.

And there’s no reason to think that space won’t follow the same pattern.

Imagine companies manufacturing high-value materials in orbit…

Pharmaceutical researchers running constant microgravity experiments…

Satellite operators replacing failed hardware rapidly…

Defense agencies deploying equipment on short notice…

Space stations receiving urgent supplies…

Many of those businesses become far more attractive if reaching orbit takes days instead of months.

Starfighters Is Still Early

This is important…

STARLAUNCH isn’t yet a mature orbital transportation system.

Starfighters is still developing and testing the technology.

But the company has completed wind-tunnel testing for STARLAUNCH I and raised additional capital to advance development, flight operations, infrastructure, and launch readiness.

STARLAUNCH I is initially aimed at suborbital and microgravity missions. And STARLAUNCH II is intended to take payloads into orbit.

And that means FJET remains highly speculative…

The company will need more testing, regulatory approvals, capital, and successful demonstrations before anyone can say the system works commercially.

But that uncertainty is also why the opportunity exists…

If Starfighters had already proven reliable on-demand launch capabilities, the market would value the company very differently.

What Happens If It Works?

This is where things get particularly interesting…

Starfighters doesn’t necessarily have to beat SpaceX. It could simply complement it.

SpaceX could remain the dominant provider of heavy, high-volume transportation.

And Starfighters could serve smaller, urgent, specialized missions where responsiveness matters more than sheer capacity.

And if STARLAUNCH proves that capability, larger aerospace companies are likely to become very interested…

That could mean partnerships. It could mean strategic investment. And yes, eventually it could even mean an acquisition.

SpaceX has acquired complementary space technology before, including satellite company Swarm Technologies.

And now, we should be clear: there is absolutely no evidence that SpaceX plans to buy Starfighters today.

But that is not the investment thesis…

The more important point is that a proven rapid-launch capability could become strategically valuable to any major player trying to dominate the future space economy.

The Missing Piece

SpaceX already changed the world by making launch cheaper. But the next breakthrough may come from making it easier…

Faster…

More flexible…

More available…

More like transportation and less like a major engineering event.

And if STARLAUNCH can shrink the timeline from months to days, or even hours, Starfighters could remove one of the biggest remaining barriers to commercial activity in space.

And once transportation becomes cheap and responsive, the space economy could accelerate much faster than most investors expect.

SpaceX built the highway…

Now, Starfighters is building the express lane.

And if it succeeds, this tiny company could become a very valuable piece of the next phase of the space boom.

Every great economic expansion has eventually run into the same problem: Transportation.

It doesn’t matter how valuable the resources are, how good the products are, or how revolutionary the technology is…

If you can’t move things where they need to go quickly, reliably, and cheaply, the opportunity stays limited.

But eventually somebody solves the transportation problem, and everything changes.

That’s essentially what happened when railroads spread across America in the 1800s…

Before them, distance placed a hard limit on economic growth.

A farmer might have valuable crops, a miner might find valuable ore, or a manufacturer might have customers hundreds of miles away.

But none of that mattered much if getting goods to market took weeks and cost a fortune.

Then railroads changed the equation…

The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.

And by 1893, five transcontinental lines and thousands of miles of connecting track had helped create something that barely existed before: a truly national economy.

Factories could suddenly sell products thousands of miles away. Farmers could reach distant markets. Entire towns, industries, and supply chains grew alongside the tracks.

Because the railroad wasn’t simply another industry…

It was the infrastructure that allowed countless other industries to exist at a scale that had been impossible without them.

And we’ve seen the same thing happen again and again…

Build the Road and the Economy Follows

The automobile provided transportation freedom that railroads couldn’t. But the automobile alone wasn’t enough…

America needed roads.

As roads improved, trucking became practical. Suburbs expanded…

Motels, gas stations, roadside restaurants, shopping centers, logistics companies, tourism businesses, and thousands of other industries grew around a transportation system that suddenly allowed people and products to travel farther and faster.

And the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 accelerated that transformation by building the modern Interstate Highway System.

There’s a great line from Thomas MacDonald, the longtime head of the Bureau of Public Roads, that sums it up:

America didn’t build its highways because it was rich. Its highways helped make America rich.

Once again, transportation infrastructure created economic opportunity.

But that was far from the last time or the most recent example…

Soon, another transportation network that worked differently but followed the same economic pattern emerged and changed the world again…

It was called the internet.

Instead of transporting people or physical goods, it transported information.

And suddenly, information that once required letters, telephone calls, libraries, couriers, newspapers, or physical documents could move almost anywhere on Earth virtually instantaneously.

And look what grew on top of that network…

E-commerce, cloud computing, streaming video, social media, online banking, remote work, software-as-a-service, digital advertising, smartphones, artificial intelligence, and countless businesses that would have sounded ridiculous before the underlying network existed.

Amazon couldn’t exist at its current scale without the internet. Neither could Google. Nor could Netflix. Or the modern cloud computing industry.

But nobody laying fiber-optic cable in the 1990s needed to predict TikTok to understand that making information dramatically cheaper and easier to move would create enormous economic opportunities.

And that’s the lesson investors should remember today.

Because another transportation revolution is getting underway. Only this road goes straight up…

Space Has a Transportation Problem

The space economy already exists…

In fact, the Space Foundation calculated that it reached $613 billion in 2024, with commercial activity accounting for 78% of the total.

And McKinsey and the World Economic Forum estimate it could reach $1.8 trillion by 2035.

But there’s still one enormous constraint: getting there.

Because for most of human history, putting something into orbit has been an extraordinarily expensive, slow, complicated undertaking.

Rockets were built largely by hand. Most major components were used once and thrown away.

Launches required enormous amounts of planning. And customers often had to design their schedules around the rocket rather than the other way around.

Imagine trying to build the modern American economy if every truck cost tens of millions of dollars, was destroyed after making one delivery, and required months of preparation before leaving the warehouse.

Well, that’s essentially the transportation system the space industry inherited. But companies are finally replacing it…

Building the Railroad to Orbit

SpaceX demonstrated the biggest breakthrough by making rocket reuse routine.

As of March 31, 2026, Falcon 9 boosters had flown as many as 34 times, according to company filings.

And SpaceX says its next-generation Starship system is being designed around full and rapid reusability, pushing the industry toward something much closer to an actual transportation network than the expendable rockets of the past.

But SpaceX isn’t alone…

Rocket Lab has already launched Electron more than 90 times and is developing the larger Neutron rocket around a reusable first stage.

It now has more than 70 missions on its manifest, demonstrating just how quickly demand for reliable access to orbit is growing.

And similar efforts are underway across the industry…

Companies are developing reusable rockets, air-launch systems, mobile launch infrastructure, orbital transfer vehicles, space tugs, refueling technology, and other systems designed to make getting payloads into space, and moving them once they’re there, faster, cheaper, and more routine.

That’s the important part…

We’re not simply building better rockets. We’re building transportation infrastructure for space.

And history tells us what happens next…

What Happens When the Toll Falls?

When transportation costs collapse, businesses that previously made no economic sense suddenly become viable.

Cheap rail transport made it profitable to develop resources hundreds or thousands of miles from customers.

Highways turned distant farmland into suburbs and created entirely new categories of commerce.

The internet reduced the cost of distributing information nearly to zero and produced trillion-dollar industries nobody had imagined beforehand.

Lower launch costs will do something similar…

More satellites become economical. Replacing them more frequently becomes practical.

Building enormous communications constellations becomes possible.

So does more sophisticated Earth observation, space-based manufacturing, private space stations, tourism, orbital servicing, debris removal, lunar infrastructure, asteroid exploration, space-based computing, and eventually industries we don’t even have names for yet.

And, honestly, that last category may ultimately be the biggest…

McKinsey makes essentially the same point when it divides the developing space economy into its “backbone” and its “reach.”

The backbone includes rockets, satellites, and ground infrastructure.

But the reach includes all the businesses that can eventually use that infrastructure to create products and services back here on Earth.

It’s the difference between investing in railroads and realizing railroads would also create Sears.

Or investing in internet infrastructure and realizing the same network would eventually produce Amazon, Google, Uber, Netflix, and thousands of other companies.

The infrastructure comes first. The truly enormous economic ecosystem comes afterward.

The Space Transportation Boom

That’s why I think investors need to look beyond rockets when considering the space economy.

Launch is critical because it’s the bottleneck being broken.

But breaking that bottleneck could unleash opportunity throughout the entire ecosystem.

There will be companies transporting payloads to orbit, companies building satellites, companies moving those satellites around once they’re there, companies servicing equipment in space, companies operating communications networks, companies processing satellite data, companies manufacturing products in microgravity, and companies building businesses we can barely conceptualize today.

The thing is, we don’t need to predict every one of them…

Investors in the 1860s didn’t need to foresee Walmart to understand the importance of connecting America.

Investors in the 1990s didn’t need to imagine artificial intelligence to understand the importance of connecting the world.

And investors today don’t need to know exactly what the trillion-dollar space company of 2040 will do.

We just need to recognize the pattern:

Build the transportation network. Lower the cost of accessing it. Increase its speed, capacity, and reliability…

And entrepreneurs will figure out what to put on it.

That process transformed America once with railroads, again with highways, and again with the internet. Now we’re watching it happen in space.

And history suggests that the biggest opportunities probably aren’t the ones we can already see…

They’re the ones that become possible once getting there is no longer the problem.

For most of the AI boom, investors have been obsessed with computing power…

Who makes the fastest chips? Who builds the biggest data centers? Who supplies the networking equipment connecting millions of processors together?

But an increasingly serious problem is emerging further down the infrastructure stack.

You can buy all the Nvidia chips you want and you can build a billion-dollar data center.

But none of it matters if you can’t turn the lights on.

And across America, that’s becoming a very real problem.

At least 75 U.S. data-center projects worth roughly $130 billion encountered local opposition during the first quarter of 2026 alone, according to Reuters.

Concerns include electricity consumption, higher utility bills, water usage, noise, and the strain enormous computing facilities can place on local infrastructure.

And the backlash has become serious enough that some projects are being delayed, reconsidered, or stopped outright.

New York recently became the first state to impose a one-year moratorium on construction of large new data centers consuming 50 megawatts or more.

Texas — arguably America’s hottest data-center market — has temporarily halted approvals for new projects seeking connections to its power grid while state officials conduct an audit.

And the numbers help explain why…

Roughly 90% of the astonishing 474 gigawatts of proposed new electricity demand being reviewed in Texas comes from data centers.

That’s more than five times the state’s current peak electrical load.

And it tells you that AI doesn’t just have a power problem…

It has a grid problem.

More Electricity Than the Grid Can Deliver

Data-center demand isn’t slowing down…

Goldman Sachs estimates electricity consumption from U.S. data centers could rise from approximately 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 66 gigawatts in 2027.

Wood Mackenzie sees U.S. data-center capacity reaching roughly 110 gigawatts by 2030, compared with approximately 24 gigawatts today.

That’s an extraordinary amount of new electricity demand arriving very quickly. And the problem is that America’s electrical infrastructure wasn’t designed for it…

Building generating capacity takes time.

So does constructing substations, transmission lines, transformers, and all the other infrastructure necessary to move electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s consumed.

So, in many regions, developers can secure the land, financing, equipment, and customers for a data center long before they can secure the electricity necessary to operate it.

And that’s why a new phrase has started becoming increasingly important in the AI infrastructure business:

Time to power.

Investors are beginning to prioritize energy projects based not simply on what electricity costs, but how quickly that electricity can actually reach a new data center.

And that’s where things get interesting. Because perhaps the solution isn’t endlessly expanding the grid to accommodate data centers…

Perhaps data centers can start bringing their own fully-powered grid.

Bring Your Own Power Plant

That’s already where the industry appears to be heading…

PJM Interconnection, which operates America’s largest electrical grid, has considered requiring massive electricity consumers — primarily data centers — to either develop their own power supplies or accept arrangements allowing their consumption to be curtailed during periods of grid stress.

Think about what that means…

For decades, the basic infrastructure model was straightforward:

Build a factory, office building, hospital, or data center and plug it into the electrical grid.

But AI data centers consume electricity on an entirely different scale. That scale could eventually turn energy generation into part of the data center itself…

And one technology may be particularly well suited to doing it.

The Nuclear Battery

You’ve probably heard about small modular reactors, or SMRs.

But there’s another category of advanced nuclear technology that’s considerably smaller, but potentially more lucrative…

They’re called microreactors.

The Department of Energy describes them as compact nuclear reactors small enough to potentially be transported by truck.

And they’re being developed to supply reliable electricity to locations ranging from remote communities to military bases.

Now we can add AI data centers to that list…

You see, instead of building an enormous conventional nuclear power station, developers envision compact reactors that could be manufactured in factories and delivered where the electricity is needed.

So, a data-center campus could potentially operate several.

Need more computing capacity? Add more servers.

Need more electricity? Add more reactors.

And the result starts looking less like the traditional relationship between a power plant and an electricity customer and more like a giant nuclear-powered battery sitting beside the data center.

Except unlike traditional batteries, nuclear reactors can continuously generate power day and night.

There’s no waiting for the sun. There’s no dependence on wind.

And there’s far less dependence on an already overcrowded electrical grid.

That’s why the Department of Energy is taking the concept seriously.

So seriously that it’s already provided support for projects exploring microreactors and sites capable of hosting nuclear-powered data centers.

And that brings us to one particularly interesting design…

Meet Morpheus

A company called Nuclea Energy is developing a microreactor called Morpheus.

And one of the markets Nuclea specifically identifies for the technology is AI and data centers.

Morpheus is designed around a compact lead-cooled nuclear architecture intended to operate in locations where conventional energy infrastructure can be difficult, expensive, or impossible to build.

That original mission included remote communities, mining operations, military installations, and extreme environments.

But suddenly the same characteristics look remarkably well suited to America’s AI infrastructure problem…

A data-center operator doesn’t necessarily need another gigantic regional power plant.

It needs reliable electricity right beside the computers.

Microreactors offer the possibility of distributed nuclear generation capable of operating continuously with a very small physical footprint.

They’re also quiet, low-carbon, and capable of operating for extended periods without the constant fuel deliveries associated with diesel or natural-gas backup generation.

In other words, something resembling a long-duration nuclear battery.

Morpheus isn’t commercially deployed yet, and that’s an important distinction.

Advanced reactors still face licensing, manufacturing, financing, deployment, and first-of-a-kind cost challenges.

And even the Department of Energy warns that new nuclear designs will take time to deploy and early reactors can be expensive.

But those hurdles don’t diminish the problem they’re attempting to solve. They simply help explain why solving it could become so valuable.

The Picks-and-Shovels Opportunity Is Changing

For the past several years, investors have made fortunes betting on the infrastructure behind AI…

Semiconductors, servers, networking equipment, cooling equipment, data centers, utilities, transformers, and electrical contractors have all benefited.

But infrastructure bottlenecks evolve.

First, we didn’t have enough chips. Then we didn’t have enough data centers…

Now, increasingly we don’t have enough accessible power.

And that’s why the next stage of the AI infrastructure boom may produce a new class of winners…

Companies capable of allowing data centers to generate electricity themselves.

That’s bigger than simply selling another megawatt of power because it could remove one of the biggest constraints preventing billions of dollars of computing infrastructure from being built.

Remember those 75 projects worth $130 billion that encountered resistance in just three months?

Every delayed data center makes a solution that can reduce dependence on local power infrastructure a little more valuable.

Every overloaded transmission line makes distributed generation more attractive.

Every community worried that an enormous AI facility will raise residents’ electricity bills strengthens the argument for making that facility supply more of its own power.

And every additional AI model requiring another warehouse filled with processors increases the urgency.

The AI revolution still needs chips. It still needs servers. It still needs data centers…

But increasingly, the most valuable piece of equipment on tomorrow’s AI campus might not be sitting inside the data center at all.

It might be the little nuclear reactor sitting outside it.

Mention the space economy, and most investors immediately picture missiles, surveillance satellites, military communications, and governments competing for control of the ultimate high ground.

That reaction is understandable because space has become central to modern warfare.

Satellites guide weapons, track troop movements, detect missile launches, transmit intelligence, and keep military units connected across continents.

And as governments increase defense spending and build new constellations, the military side of the space economy is becoming more visible by the year.

But visibility isn’t the same thing as size…

You see, the commercial space economy is already considerably larger than the government and military market most people associate with the industry.

And as launch costs fall, satellite manufacturing accelerates, and space-based services spread into nearly every major industry, that gap is likely to become much wider.

Because space may be the next battlefield. But it’s also becoming the next layer of civilian infrastructure.

A Commercial Economy Hiding in Plain Sight

The global space economy reached approximately $686 billion in 2025, representing roughly 12% growth from the previous year.

And commercial activity accounts for the overwhelming majority of that market…

In fact, one industry estimate found that commercial satellite businesses alone generated 71% of worldwide space-related revenue during 2025.

That means the space economy is no longer a collection of government programs…

It’s already a commercial marketplace.

Most people simply don’t recognize it because they interact with space infrastructure without thinking about it.

They use Google Maps to find a restaurant, check the Weather app before leaving home, follow an Amazon shipment across the country, make a credit card purchase, watch live television, or place a phone call from an isolated area.

Many people don’t realize it, but all of those activities depend, directly or indirectly, on satellites…

Space-based infrastructure helps farmers decide where to irrigate and it helps airlines choose more efficient routes.

It helps energy companies inspect pipelines, governments respond to natural disasters, insurance companies estimate property damage, and shipping companies track vessels across the oceans.

But the customer usually isn’t buying “space.”

The customer is buying connectivity, navigation, imagery, data, efficiency, or greater visibility into something happening on Earth.

And that distinction is important because it reveals where the industry is heading…

The largest space companies of the future may not make most of their money selling rockets or satellites.

They may make it by selling ordinary businesses better information and better services that happen to originate hundreds of miles above the planet.

From Hardware Industry to Information Industry

The first phase of the commercial space economy was largely about building the physical infrastructure…

Companies manufactured satellites. Rocket operators launched them. Ground stations communicated with them. And telecommunications providers sold access to their networks.

And those industries will continue growing, particularly as the number of satellites increases.

A record 4,434 satellites were deployed in 2025, 65% more than in 2024, while the total number of active satellites surpassed 14,000 in early 2026.

But the more consequential shift is happening one layer above the hardware…

You see, as satellites become cheaper, smaller, more capable, and more numerous, the data they produce becomes easier to collect and more valuable to process.

Artificial intelligence can examine millions of images, signals, weather observations, and geographic measurements far faster than human analysts ever could.

And that transforms satellites from specialized pieces of aerospace equipment into components of a global information network…

An Earth-observation company, for example, doesn’t merely sell pictures of the planet.

It can help a mining company identify geological features, tell a retailer how many cars are parked outside competing stores, estimate agricultural production, detect methane leaks, track illegal fishing, or measure activity at ports and factories.

And a navigation satellite doesn’t merely tell someone where they are.

Its timing signal helps synchronize telecommunications systems, electrical grids, bank transactions, and data networks.

A communications satellite doesn’t merely beam television programming, either…

It can connect aircraft, ships, farms, mines, factories, autonomous vehicles, emergency crews, and communities located far beyond the reach of terrestrial broadband.

The hardware enables the service. But the service is where the much larger economy develops.

The Road to $1.8 Trillion

The World Economic Forum and McKinsey estimate that the global space economy could reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from approximately $630 billion in 2023.

And their forecast suggests that much of the expansion will come not just from traditional space businesses, but from “reach applications.”

Those are industries that use space technology to create products, services, and revenue here on Earth.

That could include agriculture, transportation, telecommunications, insurance, financial services, mining, energy, construction, logistics, climate monitoring, and consumer electronics.

In other words, the space economy is likely to grow the same way the internet economy grew…

At first, investors focused on the companies building computers, laying fiber-optic cable, and operating networks.

Eventually, however, the largest opportunities emerged among businesses that used that infrastructure to reinvent advertising, retail, entertainment, banking, transportation, and communications.

Space is likely to follow a similar progression…

Rocket companies and satellite manufacturers are creating the underlying network. And the next generation of companies will build applications on top of it.

Now, some of those applications are already obvious…

Satellite broadband can connect populations that terrestrial networks can’t economically reach.

Direct-to-device networks could eventually allow ordinary phones to communicate with satellites when cellular service disappears.

Amazon, for example, has proposed a constellation of more than 5,000 satellites designed to support global voice, messaging, data, and emergency communications.

And other applications will emerge as the infrastructure improves…

Continuous Earth observation could give businesses a near-real-time view of global economic activity.

Satellite-connected machines could operate in deserts, oceans, forests, and agricultural regions where terrestrial communications remain unreliable.

Space-based sensors could detect wildfires, floods, crop disease, maritime pollution, and infrastructure failures earlier than existing systems.

You see, the value won’t come from simply placing more objects in orbit…

It’ll come from turning the information those objects gather into something people and businesses are willing to pay for.

Launch Is Becoming Transportation

But the thing is that every part of this growth trajectory depends on access to orbit.

And historically, launching a satellite requires a large rocket, a government-sized budget, and years of planning.

That has made space available primarily to nations, defense contractors, telecommunications giants, and a small number of extremely well-funded organizations.

But that barrier is falling, thanks to innovative new companies and ideas…

The satellite industry completed a record 296 launches in 2025, and U.S. regulators approved 204 commercial space operations during the year.

And the growing launch cadence reflects a market that is gradually moving away from one-off missions and toward something resembling scheduled transportation.

But that small change could be as important as any individual satellite technology…

Because industries expand when transportation becomes cheaper, faster, and more dependable.

Railroads opened continents. Container ships globalized manufacturing. Commercial aviation connected markets that once took weeks to reach.

Reliable launch services will do something similar for orbit…

More frequent launches allow companies to deploy smaller constellations, replace damaged satellites, update technology faster, and design missions around business requirements rather than rocket availability.

They also make space accessible to universities, startups, research institutions, regional governments, and companies that could never have funded an entire launch themselves.

And different missions will require different launch systems…

Large rockets will carry entire constellations and heavy infrastructure.

Smaller rockets can provide dedicated delivery.

Air-launched systems may offer speed, flexible launch locations, and the ability to place smaller payloads into specific orbits without waiting for a traditional launch schedule.

You see, the opportunity isn’t necessarily to replace the largest rockets. It’s to fill the growing transportation gaps around them.

An Economy That Eventually Moves Off Earth

Most commercial space revenue today is generated by services delivered back to Earth. And that will remain the industry’s economic foundation for years.

But it probably won’t remain the limit…

Once transportation becomes frequent enough and orbit contains enough infrastructure, companies can begin conducting more business in space itself.

Private space stations could host scientific research, pharmaceutical development, tourism, manufacturing, and astronaut training.

Microgravity may enable materials, biological products, and industrial processes that are difficult or impossible to produce under Earth’s gravity.

Satellites will require maintenance, refueling, inspection, and eventual removal.

That could create markets for orbital servicing vehicles, fuel depots, debris-removal systems, repair platforms, and space-based logistics.

Lunar activity could eventually generate demand for communications, navigation, energy, transportation, construction, and resource extraction around the Moon.

Each of those markets would require an entire supporting ecosystem.

Now, that’s not to say we should assume every futuristic business plan will work. Space remains expensive, technically difficult, heavily regulated, and unforgiving of mistakes.

But that was also true of commercial aviation, offshore energy, semiconductors, and the early internet.

The important point isn’t that every proposed space industry will become viable.

It’s that the basic ingredients of a much larger commercial economy are falling into place…

Lower launch costs, mass-produced satellites, private capital, improving communications, artificial intelligence, reusable hardware, and a rapidly expanding customer base.

More Main Street Than Star Wars

Military spending will remain an important part of the space economy.

And in some areas, government contracts will help finance technologies that later find civilian customers…

Communications, navigation, remote sensing, and launch capabilities have always moved back and forth between public and private markets.

But defense isn’t the entire space story, and it may eventually become a relatively small part of it.

The larger opportunity is a world in which space infrastructure becomes embedded in ordinary economic activity.

It’ll help farmers grow more food, communications companies reach more customers, manufacturers manage their supply chains, insurers better understand risk, ships navigate more efficiently, emergency crews respond faster, and consumers stay connected almost anywhere on Earth.

And later, it may support factories, research laboratories, hotels, fuel depots, and transportation networks operating beyond the planet.

That is how the space economy ultimately becomes far larger than the military market that captures most of today’s attention.

The rockets may be the most dramatic part and the defense contracts may generate the biggest headlines…

But the enduring economic opportunity will be built from thousands of civilian services quietly becoming faster, cheaper, safer, and more capable because they’ve gained access to space.

That’s why the future of the space economy won’t look only like a missile warning system or a science-fiction battle.

It’ll look like infrastructure. And eventually, it’ll be almost everywhere.

Mention the space economy and most investors picture missiles, surveillance satellites, secret military programs, and billionaires racing one another to Mars.

And that’s pretty understandable because governments dominated space for most of its history.

And military spending still funds some of the most advanced technology being developed beyond Earth.

Space has become essential to intelligence gathering, missile warning, secure communications, and national defense.

But that’s not the whole story. In fact, it may not even be the most important part of the story for investors…

You see, the emerging space economy is increasingly commercial, civilian, and surprisingly practical.

It isn’t primarily being built to fight wars or colonize distant planets…

It’s being built to improve communications, predict weather, monitor crops, guide aircraft, track ships, manage supply chains, deliver internet access, respond to disasters, and collect information that businesses on Earth can use every day.

The rockets get the attention. But the real economic opportunity is really everything they’re carrying.

More Satellites Than Ever Before

The number of objects being sent into orbit has exploded….

In 2025, a record 296 launches deployed 4,434 satellites into Earth orbit, marking a 65% increase from the previous year.

And by the end of 2025, roughly 14,266 operational satellites were circling the planet.

Just for perspective, there were only 3,371 operational satellites in orbit at the end of 2020.

So, that means the number of satellites launched during 2025 alone exceeded the entire operational satellite population of just five years earlier.

That’s how quickly this industry is changing. And despite what you might think, most of those satellites aren’t weapons…

They’re part of commercial constellations providing communications, navigation, Earth observation, weather data, internet connectivity, and other services.

In fact, the commercial satellite industry generated approximately 71% of all global space-business revenue in 2025.

And that tells you space is no longer a government program. It’s becoming infrastructure.

The Invisible Infrastructure Above Us

Most people already use space-based services several times a day without even thinking about them…

Navigation apps depend on satellites to determine where we are and how to get where we’re going.

Airplanes and ships use satellite systems to navigate, communicate, and avoid dangerous conditions.

Farmers use satellite imagery to evaluate crop health, moisture levels, and soil conditions.

Energy companies monitor pipelines and offshore infrastructure. Insurers assess storm damage. Emergency responders track wildfires, flooding, oil spills, and other disasters.

Telecommunications networks use satellites to reach areas where traditional infrastructure is too expensive, too difficult, or too slow to build…

This allows remote communities can gain access to broadband and companies to maintain communications with aircraft, ships, mines, oil platforms, and construction projects far from existing networks.

Even weather forecasting has become a commercial space business…

Companies are placing small satellites into orbit to collect atmospheric measurements from around the globe.

And that information can help utilities estimate electricity demand, shipping companies select more efficient routes, airlines avoid dangerous conditions, farmers prepare for rainfall or drought, and commodity traders anticipate changes in production.

One small public company operating in this market is Spire Global…

Spire uses a constellation of nanosatellites to gather weather, aviation, and maritime information.

Its systems can monitor atmospheric conditions, follow aircraft and ship movements, and detect disruptions such as GPS interference.

The company then converts that information into data products that commercial and government customers can use.

That’s a very different business from planting flags on the Moon. It sounds a lot closer to building Bloomberg terminals in orbit.

Every Industry Wants a View from Above

Earth-observation satellites are also changing the way companies understand what’s happening on the ground…

Frequent satellite images can reveal activity at ports, mines, factories, farms, construction sites, pipelines, and storage facilities.

They can show whether ships are lining up outside a harbor, whether crops are suffering from drought, whether a mine is expanding production, or whether construction has begun on a major industrial project.

As satellite constellations grow, the time between images of the same location continues to shrink.

So, instead of receiving occasional pictures, customers can increasingly monitor important locations almost continuously.

You see, the value isn’t merely in the image itself. It’s in the information that software can extract from thousands or millions of those images…

Artificial intelligence can identify changes, flag anomalies, estimate inventories, count vehicles, measure construction progress, and detect environmental damage.

Satellite imagery is gradually becoming another stream of business data. It’s just one that happens to originate hundreds of miles above the customer.

And that creates opportunities not only for satellite operators but also for the companies manufacturing spacecraft, producing sensors, processing data, maintaining satellites, operating ground stations, and delivering payloads into the correct orbit.

As it matures, space is becoming an entire ecosystem rather than a single industry.

Space Will Need Maintenance Crews

Putting thousands of satellites into orbit also creates an entirely new problem…

They won’t all operate forever.

Satellites can run low on fuel, experience mechanical problems, drift away from their assigned positions, or become obsolete before the end of their physical lives.

And until recently, the normal solution was to abandon the old spacecraft and launch a replacement. But that’s beginning to change…

Companies are developing vehicles capable of approaching satellites, adjusting their orbits, extending their useful lives, adding propulsion modules, inspecting damage, and eventually refueling or repairing equipment in space.

In fact, a private mission launched in July 2026 is currently carrying Northrop Grumman’s Mission Robotic Vehicle.

It’s designed to attach propulsion modules to three aging communications satellites.

Those modules could keep valuable satellites operating for several additional years rather than forcing their owners to replace them immediately.

Katalyst Space Technologies, another smaller company, has also received a $30 million NASA contract to raise the orbit of the agency’s Swift Observatory and extend its useful life.

This is literally the beginning of a completely new orbital service economy.

And as more valuable equipment moves into space, someone will have to inspect it, maintain it, reposition it, refuel it, and eventually remove it.

The more infrastructure we place in orbit, the more valuable reliable and flexible access to that infrastructure becomes.

The Missing Link Is Access

This brings us to one of the space economy’s biggest remaining bottlenecks…

Launching a large group of satellites on a large rocket can be relatively economical.

But not every customer wants to wait for a major launch, share a ride with dozens of other payloads, or accept an orbit chosen for someone else’s mission.

Smaller satellite companies may need a very specific altitude, inclination, or deployment schedule…

A university may need to launch a scientific experiment.

A communications operator may need to replace one failed satellite quickly.

A manufacturer may want to test a new component without purchasing space aboard an enormous rocket.

So, the space economy needs something closer to on-demand delivery. And that’s where Starfighters Space enters the story…

Starfighters operates the world’s only commercially available fleet of F-104 supersonic aircraft.

Based at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, its modified aircraft can carry payloads to altitudes of roughly 45,000 feet and serve as the first stage of an air-launch system.

Instead of firing a rocket from a fixed launchpad, Starfighters aims to carry a smaller launch vehicle beneath a supersonic aircraft, accelerate it through the densest part of the atmosphere, and release it at high altitude.

From there, the rocket continues into space. And the approach offers several advantages…

Air-launched systems can operate with more flexibility than traditional launch facilities, avoid some weather constraints, reach different orbital inclinations, and deploy smaller payloads on schedules tailored to the customer.

That flexibility matters in a commercial market increasingly built around smaller satellites and specialized missions.

So, Starfighters doesn’t need to replace giant rockets. It can complement them instead.

Because a large rocket is ideal for deploying hundreds or thousands of satellites at once.

But the commercial space economy will also need something more closely resembling an express-delivery service…

One capable of carrying smaller, time-sensitive, or highly specialized payloads without waiting for space on someone else’s mission.

Yes, There’s a Military Opportunity

Starfighters also obviously has clear defense applications…

Its aircraft can support high-speed flight research, hypersonic testing, pilot training, and the development of systems designed to detect or intercept advanced missiles.

Governments are spending heavily in these areas, and defense contracts could become an important source of revenue.

But investors shouldn’t allow the military opportunity to obscure the larger commercial story.

The same high-speed aircraft, testing capabilities, and air-launch platform that can support national defense can also help universities conduct experiments, satellite companies deploy new spacecraft, manufacturers test components, communications networks replace damaged assets, and Earth-observation businesses expand their constellations.

The technology can serve both markets. And the civilian market is growing incredibly quickly.

The Industrialization of Orbit

The first space race was between governments, but the next one will be between companies.

Commercial businesses are already building communications networks, weather systems, navigation services, Earth-observation platforms, orbital repair vehicles, private space stations, and data services above the atmosphere.

As those markets grow, they’ll need the same things every new industry eventually needs…

Transportation, logistics, maintenance, communications, manufacturing, insurance, software, and specialized service providers.

That’s the part of the space economy many investors still don’t understand.

They see rockets and think exploration. They see satellites and think espionage.

They hear about space and imagine something distant from everyday life.

But the modern space economy is being built to solve problems right here on Earth.

It’s becoming an invisible layer of infrastructure supporting agriculture, transportation, energy, telecommunications, finance, logistics, emergency response, and countless other industries.

Starfighters Space and its peers have military potential, and that shouldn’t be dismissed.

But the more interesting long-term opportunity may come from helping build the civilian economy taking shape above our heads.

Because as thousands more companies find reasons to operate in orbit, they’re all going to need a way to get there.

Artificial intelligence may live in the cloud, but the infrastructure supporting it is becoming impossible to ignore…

Every prompt, generated image, automated report, and AI-assisted discovery ultimately runs through a physical data center filled with processors that consume enormous amounts of electricity and generate tremendous heat.

And as AI models grow more capable, the campuses supporting them are becoming larger, more expensive, and considerably more demanding.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, communities are beginning to push back. And they’re pushing back hard enough to make a big impact…

More than $130 billion worth of proposed American data center projects were reportedly blocked or delayed during the first three months of 2026 alone.

Think about that…

Around the world, governments and municipalities have imposed moratoriums, rejected developments, or demanded stricter conditions before allowing hyperscale facilities to connect to local infrastructure.

The objections vary from one location to another…

Some residents worry about noise, disappearing farmland, changing landscapes, and the relatively small number of permanent jobs created after construction ends.

But two complaints consistently rise above the others….

Data centers consume electricity.

And that problem could determine whether the AI infrastructure boom continues accelerating or crashes into the limitations of the existing power grid.

The Physical Cost of Artificial Intelligence

For years, data centers were treated as relatively unobtrusive pieces of infrastructure.

They were windowless buildings that stored websites, processed financial transactions, and delivered streaming video.

But AI has changed the scale of the business…

Traditional computing workloads tend to rise and fall. AI training campuses can run thousands of specialized processors continuously.

And inference facilities must remain ready to respond to users at any hour, day or night.

That means a modern AI campus will require hundreds of megawatts of reliable electricity.

S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates that U.S. data center electricity demand could reach 82.3 gigawatts in 2026.

That’s this year! And that’s up 28% from 2025 and more than double the level of three years earlier.

That kind of demand can’t be hidden behind a fence. And a facility consuming as much electricity as a city quickly becomes a local political issue…

Residents understandably want to know whether their utility will need to build new substations, transmission lines, and power plants to serve it.

But more importantly, they want to know who will pay for all that infrastructure.

Because technology companies routinely promise to cover the direct cost of connecting their campuses. But electricity markets are complicated…

A new industrial customer can affect transmission congestion, capacity auctions, generation planning, and utility capital spending across an entire region.

And that creates a simple and politically powerful fear: The data center gets the electricity, while local families get the bill.

Research into the historical relationship between data centers and electricity rates is not unanimous on that conclusion….

One 2026 academic study found that data center growth may actually have lowered average retail rates between 2015 and 2024 by spreading fixed grid costs across a larger volume of electricity sales.

However, its authors also warned that future supply constraints could reverse that effect.

And that warning matters more than the historical evidence, because the grid is no longer operating under the conditions that existed a decade ago.

Transmission congestion is growing. New power plants and transmission lines can take years to approve.

Transformers, turbines, and other electrical equipment remain difficult to secure.

Meanwhile, data center developers increasingly want gigawatts of capacity on timelines measured in months rather than decades.

Whether data centers have raised rates in the past is almost beside the point. Communities are worried that the next wave will.

And perception alone is enough to stop a project dead in its tracks.

The Grid Was Not Built for This

The AI industry simply can’t keep plugging enormous new campuses into a grid that was designed for slower, more predictable growth.

Even where enough generating capacity exists in theory, the electricity may be located hundreds of miles from the proposed data center.

Moving it requires transmission infrastructure that can take a decade or longer to permit and construct. And grid congestion is already becoming expensive…

In the PJM market (that covers all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia) transmission congestion cost about $1.8 billion during May and June 2026 alone.

And adding more intermittent generation like wind and solar can help produce electricity, but an AI data center requires power around the clock.

Batteries can smooth short interruptions and shift electricity between hours, but providing continuous backup for a multihundred-megawatt campus would require an enormous amount of storage.

Natural gas offers dependable generation and can be deployed faster than many alternatives, which is why turbines, fuel cells, and behind-the-meter gas plants are becoming part of the data center conversation.

But gas still produces emissions, requires pipeline access, and exposes operators to fuel-price volatility. Plus, the backlog on new gas turbines is now nearly a decade long.

The more durable solution here is to stop treating the grid as the data center’s only power source….

And realize that the power plant can become part of the campus itself.

Nuclear Power Without the Giant Nuclear Plant

Traditional nuclear reactors are exceptionally reliable once operating, but building one is a monumental undertaking.

Projects can require billions of dollars, vast construction sites, and decades of regulatory review.

But micro modular reactors are designed to change that equation…

Rather than constructing a custom-built gigawatt-scale plant, developers envision smaller reactors manufactured largely in factories, transported to their destination, and installed in standardized configurations.

Multiple units could be added as a campus grows, allowing operators to match electricity supply more closely with computing demand.

And that makes them particularly interesting for data centers…

A microreactor can theoretically provide steady power without relying on weather, long-distance transmission, or frequent fuel deliveries.

It can operate behind the meter, reducing the amount of electricity the campus has to pull from the public grid.

And because nuclear fuel contains an extraordinary amount of energy, a compact reactor can potentially run for years before refueling.

And one company pursuing this opportunity is Nuclea Energy…

Nuclea is developing the Morpheus Micro Modular Reactor, a factory-fabricated, lead-cooled nuclear system intended for remote communities, industrial facilities, military infrastructure, mining operations, and data centers.

The proposed design is intended to scale from approximately 3.5 megawatts to 50 megawatts of electrical output.

Several units could therefore be deployed together to support a much larger campus.

Morpheus also differs substantially from conventional water-cooled reactors…

The design uses lead as its primary coolant and is intended to operate at low pressure.

You see, lead has a very high boiling point, allowing it to absorb substantial heat without boiling under normal operating conditions.

And because the primary cooling system doesn’t depend on water or steam, the design also avoids the hydrogen production risks associated with some traditional reactor accidents.

Nuclea says Morpheus will incorporate passive heat removal and a negative temperature coefficient, meaning the nuclear reaction naturally slows as the reactor temperature rises.

And perhaps most importantly for the AI industry, it is being designed as a sealed, transportable system rather than a miniature version of a traditional nuclear station.

That could eventually allow a data center developer to install a reactor alongside computing modules, cooling equipment, backup systems, and energy storage.

The campus would still maintain a grid connection, but it would no longer depend entirely on the grid for its continuous baseload needs.

Powering AI Without Punishing the Public

The AI infrastructure boom isn’t slowing because the world lost interest in artificial intelligence…

It is slowing because the physical systems required to support AI haven’t caught up with the software.

And if AI campuses continue relying primarily on public grids, developers will continue to face increasingly fierce resistance from residents who fear higher bills, declining reliability, and massive infrastructure costs.

But micro modular reactors offer another path…

They could allow data centers to bring their own dependable power, just as they already bring their own servers, networking equipment, cooling systems, and backup generators.

And instead of forcing local utilities to rebuild the grid around a single enormous customer, reactors such as Morpheus could turn each data center into a largely self-contained energy campus.

The technology still has to be licensed, manufactured, financed, and proven in the real world.

But the companies that solve the industry’s electricity problems won’t merely supply another component to the data center boom.

They’ll make the next stage of that boom possible.

And in a world where communities are already blocking more than $100 billion worth of proposed AI infrastructure…

That may be one of the most valuable problems any company can solve.

For decades, investing in defense meant buying shares of companies that built fighter jets, aircraft carriers, tanks, missiles, and submarines.

And that made perfect sense because those were the tools that defined modern warfare.

America maintained the world’s most powerful military thanks in large part to industrial giants like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, Boeing, and General Dynamics.

Those companies remain essential to our national security, and I expect they will for decades to come.

But warfare doesn’t stand still. And neither do the companies that supply it.

Today’s battlefield looks dramatically different than it did even a decade ago….

Artificial intelligence is helping commanders make decisions faster than ever.

Autonomous drones are conducting reconnaissance and striking targets that once required expensive aircraft.

Unmanned boats are patrolling strategic waterways. Space has become a contested military domain.

And hypersonic missiles have forced the United States to rethink how it defends itself against threats that can travel at several times the speed of sound.

But the Pentagon isn’t replacing its traditional contractors….

Instead, it’s supporting an entirely new layer of defense companies alongside them.

And for investors, that’s creating an opportunity to identify tomorrow’s defense leaders while many are still relatively unknown.

Warfare Is Changing

Recent conflicts have clearly demonstrated that military superiority is no longer determined solely by who has the biggest ships or the most advanced fighter jets…

The war in Ukraine and the conflict with Iran has shown how inexpensive drones can destroy equipment worth millions of dollars.

Attacks in the Red Sea and around the Gulf region have highlighted the importance of autonomous surveillance and rapid-response systems.

At the same time, growing concerns about hypersonic weapons and expanding military activity in space have pushed the United States to accelerate investments in entirely new technologies.

Projects like the Golden Dome missile defense system illustrate just how much thinking has changed….

Defending the homeland now requires a network of satellites, sensors, artificial intelligence, autonomous interceptors, and advanced communications working together in real time.

That’s a very different challenge than simply building another aircraft carrier.

And as a result, many of the fastest-growing defense companies don’t look like traditional defense contractors at all. They look more like technology startups.

Silicon Valley Goes to War

The newest generation of defense companies is bringing Silicon Valley’s mindset into an industry that has historically moved at government speed.

Instead of designing one platform that remains largely unchanged for decades, these companies build software-driven systems that can be upgraded continuously.

They focus on autonomy, robotics, artificial intelligence, advanced sensors, and commercial innovation that can quickly be adapted for military use.

Some specialize in autonomous aircraft. Others build unmanned ships capable of operating for months without a crew.

Still others are developing lower-cost launch systems, hypersonic testing platforms, or AI-powered command-and-control software.

Taken together, they’re creating an entirely new defense ecosystem…

One designed for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Four Companies Worth Watching

Perhaps no company better represents this new movement than Anduril…

Still privately held, Anduril has become one of the fastest-growing names in defense technology by combining artificial intelligence, autonomous aircraft, underwater vehicles, surveillance systems, and advanced software into integrated defense platforms.

Rather than waiting years for government specifications before developing new products, the company often builds first and iterates quickly, borrowing a playbook that’s far more common in Silicon Valley than Washington.

And while investors can’t yet buy shares on the public market, Anduril demonstrates exactly where the defense industry is headed.

Public market investors, however, do have other options…

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (NASDAQ: KTOS) has quietly spent years developing many of the same technologies now attracting attention across the industry.

The company builds unmanned aircraft, satellite communications systems, advanced propulsion technologies, and solutions supporting hypersonic weapons and missile defense.

And unlike the traditional prime contractors that focus on a handful of massive programs, Kratos has positioned itself as a provider of lower-cost, rapidly deployable systems built for the realities of modern warfare.

For investors looking for publicly traded exposure to this trend, Kratos remains one of the purest opportunities available.

Another company that has largely flown beneath Wall Street’s radar is Starfighters Space (NYSE: FJET).

Recently listed on the public markets, Starfighters sits at the intersection of aerospace, defense, and the rapidly expanding space economy…

The company operates a fleet of high-performance aircraft capable of supporting hypersonic testing, military research, and advanced flight operations while developing technologies that could make launching payloads into space faster and more affordable.

As America’s military places greater emphasis on defending assets in orbit and responding quickly to emerging threats, companies capable of providing flexible access to the upper atmosphere and space could become increasingly valuable.

Starfighters remains an early-stage and speculative investment, but it’s exactly the kind of under-the-radar company I believe investors should keep on their watch lists.

bluShift Aerospace is another example of how innovation is reshaping the industry…

The company is developing lower-cost launch systems built around environmentally friendly propulsion technology, illustrating how commercial advances can eventually find military applications as well.

Whether the mission involves deploying satellites, supporting scientific research, or enabling future national security initiatives, reducing the cost and complexity of reaching space is likely to become an increasingly important strategic advantage.

Each of these companies represents a different piece of the same puzzle…

Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, hypersonic technologies, responsive space access.

These aren’t isolated markets. Together, they’re helping define the future of national defense.

A Much Bigger Opportunity

Of course, these four companies are only a small sample of what’s taking shape…

Rocket Lab continues expanding its role in military launch services and satellite systems.

Red Cat is developing unmanned aircraft for defense applications.

Shield AI is advancing autonomous combat aviation.

Saronic is bringing autonomy to naval operations, while Saildrone is redefining maritime surveillance through unmanned surface vessels.

Some of these companies are public. Others remain private. Many are still unfamiliar to investors.

But collectively, they represent one of the most significant shifts in the defense industry in generations.

The Bottom Line

Every major technological revolution creates a new generation of market leaders.

The railroad boom did it. The automobile industry did it. The internet did it.

Artificial intelligence is doing it today. And national defense will be no different.

The companies helping America prepare for tomorrow’s battlefield won’t all resemble the defense giants of the past.

Increasingly, they’ll look like software developers, robotics specialists, aerospace innovators, and AI companies applying commercial technology to some of the world’s most important national security challenges.

Some are already public. Some are still private. Nearly all of them are still flying well below Wall Street’s radar.

And that’s exactly why investors should start getting to know the new faces of national defense today.

Technology companies want them. Governments want them. Real estate developers want them. Utilities want them and the business that comes with them.

Investors want a piece of whatever company can supply the land, electricity, chips, cooling systems, cables, transformers, and concrete needed to build them.

And the numbers are getting ridiculous…

Trillions of dollars are expected to flow into artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next several years.

Companies are buying land, signing long-term power agreements, restarting old power plants, considering nuclear reactors, and searching for any location where they can secure enough electricity to run the next generation of computing.

The entire world seems to be asking the same question:

Where are we going to build all these data centers?

But I think that’s the wrong question. Or at least an incomplete one…

Because while everyone is searching for places to build the data centers of the future, there are already enormous computing facilities scattered around the world.

They already have land. They already have power. They already have cooling. They already have industrial infrastructure.

They’re often located in politically stable countries with relatively predictable laws and property rights.

And many of them were specifically built in places where electricity was cheap and plentiful.

The problem is that a lot of them are being used to mine cryptocurrency, but that might be about to change…

The Original Search for Cheap Power

Long before artificial intelligence companies started scouring the planet for electricity, cryptocurrency miners were already doing it.

That was their entire business model…

Bitcoin mining is basically a competition to perform enormous amounts of computation as efficiently as possible where the winners are rewarded with newly created Bitcoin.

That means the economics depend heavily on the cost of electricity.

So miners went searching for the cheapest power they could find…

They moved near hydroelectric dams. They set up operations in areas with abundant natural gas.

They moved into cold climates where outside air could help reduce cooling costs.

They bought old industrial sites with existing electrical infrastructure. They negotiated directly with utilities.

They looked for locations where they could connect enormous amounts of computing equipment to the grid without waiting years for approval.

Sound familiar? Well, it should…

Because that’s almost exactly what AI companies are doing today.

The difference is that the cryptocurrency miners started almost a decade earlier.

The Hardest Part Is Already Done

When most people picture a data center, they picture a giant warehouse filled with computers.

But the building isn’t the hard part. You can build a warehouse almost anywhere.

The real problem is everything that has to come with it…

You need enormous amounts of reliable electricity. You need grid connections. You need substations. You need transformers. You need transmission capacity.

You need cooling. You need fiber. You need roads. You need security. You need permits. You need local governments willing to let you operate.

And, increasingly, you need time. And that might be the most valuable asset of all…

You see, the AI industry doesn’t have ten years to wait for every new power plant, transmission line, and data center campus to work its way through the permitting process.

The race is happening now.

Companies that can get computing capacity online in 18 months could have an enormous advantage over companies that have to wait five years.

And that changes the value of existing infrastructure…

A cryptocurrency mining site might not be ready to host advanced AI processors tomorrow morning. To be fair, in many cases, it will need substantial upgrades.

AI servers are more power-dense. Their cooling requirements can be more complicated. The networking infrastructure is different. Reliability standards can be higher.

But that misses the bigger point…

The building can be upgraded. The servers can be replaced. The cooling systems can be improved…

But the electrical connection is much harder to recreate. And in the AI age, access to electricity may end up being worth more than the computers plugged into it.

Yesterday’s Crypto Mine Could Be Tomorrow’s AI Factory

This is where the investment opportunity gets interesting…

The market spent years valuing cryptocurrency miners based primarily on a handful of numbers.

How much Bitcoin could they produce? What did it cost them to produce it?

How much computing power did they control? How much Bitcoin did they hold on their balance sheets?

Those numbers still matter. But they may no longer tell the whole story…

Because some of these companies aren’t just cryptocurrency miners.

They’re owners of powered land. They’re owners of grid connections.

They’re owners of data center campuses. They’re owners of cooling infrastructure.

They’re owners of something the AI industry desperately needs and can’t quickly manufacture: Time.

And that means a cryptocurrency mining company that looks mediocre based on its Bitcoin production could be sitting on an extremely valuable collection of infrastructure.

The market may think it owns a struggling crypto mine, but an AI company may look at the exact same property and see a shortcut worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

That difference in perception is where investors should be looking.

The Great Compute Migration Has Already Started

This isn’t just a theory anymore…

Cryptocurrency miners have already begun shifting parts of their businesses toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.

The reason is simple: Mining cryptocurrency can be a volatile business.

Revenue depends on cryptocurrency prices, network competition, equipment efficiency, and electricity costs.

A miner can spend enormous amounts of money building infrastructure only to watch the economics change when crypto prices fall or competition increases.

AI offers a different potential business model…

Instead of using all that electricity to compete for digital coins, a company may be able to lease infrastructure to AI developers, cloud providers, or other high-performance computing customers.

That can create longer-term contracts and more predictable revenue. And investors are beginning to notice.

Wall Street is increasingly looking at certain cryptocurrency miners not as pure crypto companies…

But as potential AI infrastructure companies with something extremely valuable already in place: power.

That doesn’t mean every cryptocurrency mine will become an AI data center.

Some are in the wrong locations. Some don’t have adequate fiber connections.

Some don’t have the right buildings. Some use power arrangements that aren’t reliable enough for AI workloads.

Some were built as cheaply as possible and would require too much money to upgrade.

But some of them are sitting on exactly what the AI industry needs. And those are the ones worth watching.

Stop Counting Servers and Start Counting Megawatts

For years, investors looked at cryptocurrency miners and focused on computing power. But I’m convinced the more important number today is electrical power…

How many megawatts does the company already control? How much additional power can it secure?

How long are its energy agreements? What does that power cost?

Is it connected to a reliable grid? Can the site be expanded?

Is there fiber nearby? Can the infrastructure support high-density computing?

And how quickly could the site be converted?

Those questions can tell you something a Bitcoin production chart can’t…

They can tell you what the company might become.

And that’s important because the next generation of winners may not be the companies that mine the most cryptocurrency.

They may be the companies that realize their real asset was never the cryptocurrency mine in the first place.

It was the infrastructure underneath it.

The Picks and Shovels Are Already in the Ground

Investors love a good gold rush.

But the biggest winners are often the people who already own the things everyone suddenly needs.

During the AI boom, everyone is searching for chips. They’re searching for copper.

They’re searching for transformers. They’re searching for land. And, more than anything else, they’re searching for electricity.

Cryptocurrency miners spent the last decade searching for many of the same things.

They found cheap power. They secured land. They built server farms. They installed cooling systems. They connected to the grid.

They did all of this because they thought the future would belong to cryptocurrency, but some of them may have accidentally built infrastructure for an even bigger market.

That’s the opportunity investors need to understand…

The AI data center boom won’t be built entirely from scratch. It can’t be. There isn’t enough time.

Instead, some of the most valuable infrastructure in the AI race may already be sitting in plain sight, hidden inside companies that investors still think of as cryptocurrency miners.

The machines inside those buildings can change. The chips can change. The customers can change. The business model can change.

But cheap, reliable power connected to a functioning data center campus is much harder to replace.

That’s why, as the AI race accelerates, I’m spending less time asking who can build the biggest new data center.

I’m starting to ask a different question: Who already owns one?

When most investors think about the future of artificial intelligence, they picture the same thing…

A massive data center campus. Endless rows of servers. Miles of cable. Huge substations. Dedicated power plants. Enough electricity demand to rival a small city.

That image isn’t wrong. The biggest AI models require enormous computing power, and the companies building them are already racing to secure land, transmission access, cooling capacity, and long-term energy contracts.

But that’s only one part of the story…

The market has become obsessed with the biggest version of the AI infrastructure buildout.

And investors are focused on hyperscale campuses, giant nuclear projects, massive transmission upgrades, and small modular reactors capable of producing hundreds of megawatts of electricity.

Yet AI isn’t going to live only inside a handful of mega-complexes.

A growing share of AI will need to happen much closer to where the work is being done.

That means hospitals, factories, defense facilities, ports, financial centers, robotics hubs, autonomous vehicle networks, university research campuses, and eventually quantum-adjacent computing environments.

These sites may not need a 300-megawatt reactor.

But many of them will need far more power than the local grid can easily provide.

That gap — too small for a traditional power plant, too large for the existing grid — may become one of the most important overlooked opportunities in the AI boom.

The Shift No One’s Talking About

The first phase of AI has been dominated by training.

Training a large AI model requires huge clusters of chips running at full capacity for long stretches of time.

That’s why the hyperscale campus became the symbol of this boom…

You need land. You need cooling. You need fiber. And most of all, you need massive amounts of reliable power.

But once a model is trained, the next challenge is inference.

Inference is what happens when AI is actually used…

It’s the chatbot answering a question. The medical imaging system flagging a tumor. The robotic arm correcting itself in real time. The fraud detection system approving a transaction. The drone network processing battlefield data.

That work doesn’t always belong in a remote mega-campus.

In many cases, it needs to happen close to the user, the machine, the patient, the vehicle, the factory, or the secure facility.

That reduces latency. It improves privacy. It makes real-time decisions possible. And it keeps sensitive data closer to where it’s created.

And that changes the geography of AI…

The next phase won’t be built only around a few enormous data center hubs. It’ll also require smaller, localized data centers spread across the country.

Not server closets… Real data centers.

But ones measured in single-digit megawatts, tens of megawatts, or perhaps low hundreds of megawatts — not sprawling gigawatt campuses.

And that creates a very different kind of power problem…

The Grid Wasn’t Built for This

Many investors assume that if a data center is smaller, the power problem goes away, but it doesn’t…

A smaller AI facility may still require more electricity than the surrounding grid can spare.

And a hospital system using AI for diagnostics can’t wait a decade for new transmission lines.

Similarly, a defense contractor can’t rely on unstable power. And a factory running AI-powered robotics can’t shut down every time the local grid gets stressed.

These facilities need firm, reliable, always-on electricity.

And in many parts of the country, the grid is already under pressure from population growth, electrification, manufacturing reshoring, electric vehicles, industrial expansion, and the first wave of data center demand.

That’s the real bottleneck.

The issue isn’t whether America can build more data centers…

The issue is whether America can power them in the right places, on the right timeline, with the right level of reliability.

For smaller localized AI centers, the answer may increasingly be, “not from the grid alone.”

And that creates what I like to call the middle-megawatt problem…

A hyperscale AI campus may eventually justify a dedicated nuclear project, a full gas-fired power plant, or a major renewable-plus-storage buildout.

A normal office building can rely on the grid and backup generators.

But what about a 10-megawatt AI center next to a robotics factory?

What about a 25-megawatt secure compute facility serving a defense contractor?

What about a 50-megawatt regional inference center supporting hospitals, logistics networks, and industrial automation?

Those projects sit in an awkward middle ground…

They need more power than the local grid may be able to provide. They need reliability that intermittent power alone can’t deliver.

But they may not be large enough to justify a full small modular reactor project.

And that leaves a much narrower list of practical options…

The first is onsite natural gas generation.

The second is batteries, fuel cells, and hybrid microgrids.

The third — still early, but potentially enormous — is the micro modular reactor.

Natural Gas Gets There First

Natural gas obviously isn’t the futuristic answer we’re all hoping for. But it’s the answer that can be deployed now.

That’s why generator companies, turbine manufacturers, and microgrid developers are suddenly becoming part of the AI story.

Data center operators need power faster than utilities can always provide it.

Natural gas systems can be installed behind the meter, paired with batteries, used as backup, or even serve as the primary power source for facilities that can’t wait on the grid.

That matters for investors.

The AI power shortage is moving from theory to procurement. And companies aren’t just talking about the problem anymore.

They’re ordering turbines, generators, transformers, switchgear, and microgrid systems.

Natural gas has obvious advantages in this environment…

It can be deployed faster than new transmission. It provides firm power. It can run day and night. It can support facilities that need reliability above all else.

But that doesn’t make it perfect…

Gas projects face emissions concerns, permitting challenges, fuel supply questions, and political opposition in certain markets.

But the AI buildout is moving faster than the clean power buildout.

And when developers are forced to choose between delaying a project for years or installing onsite generation, many will choose the option that gets the servers running.

That creates near-term tailwinds for companies tied to gas turbines, reciprocating engines, backup generators, microgrids, electrical equipment, grid controls, and power infrastructure.

This is the first wave of the localized AI power trade.

Microreactors Could Be the Second Wave

The longer-term opportunity may be even more interesting for investors…

Small modular reactors get most of the headlines because they could provide hundreds of megawatts of clean, reliable power and that makes them a logical fit for the biggest AI campuses.

But many localized AI centers don’t need hundreds of megawatts…

They need 5, 10, 25, or 50.

And that’s the microreactor market.

Micro modular reactors are designed to be much smaller than traditional nuclear plants.

Some concepts are intended to produce only a few megawatts of electricity. Others could support industrial sites, military bases, remote facilities, mining operations, or small data centers.

For localized AI, that’s exactly the point…

A microreactor doesn’t need to power an entire city. It only needs to provide clean, reliable, compact power to a specific site that can’t depend on the grid alone.

This market is still early. Regulatory approval, fuel supply, cost, waste handling, security, and public acceptance all remain real hurdles.

So, investors shouldn’t treat microreactors as if they’re already rolling off assembly lines and powering AI inference centers across the country.

But the direction is clear…

The more AI spreads beyond mega-campuses, the more demand there will be for compact, reliable onsite power.

Natural gas gets there first. Microreactors seem likely to follow.

And when they do, the opportunity won’t be limited to reactor developers…

It’ll extend to uranium miners, nuclear fuel processors, advanced materials companies, component suppliers, engineering firms, and manufacturers that help turn reactor concepts into deployable power systems.

Quantum Makes the Trade Even Bigger

Quantum computing adds another layer to this story…

Quantum machines are still highly specialized, difficult to scale, and often dependent on unusual cooling and operating conditions.

But as quantum computing moves from laboratories toward commercial and national-security applications, it’ll require secure, reliable, power-dense infrastructure.

Some of that infrastructure will be centralized.

But some of it will likely sit near universities, government labs, defense facilities, financial institutions, and industrial research centers.

That means quantum doesn’t replace the localized AI power thesis; it strengthens it.

The future of computing won’t be one giant cloud…

It’ll be a layered system made up of hyperscale training campuses, regional inference centers, edge facilities, secure compute nodes, and eventually quantum-linked infrastructure.

Every layer needs power.

And the most overlooked layer may be the one too small for Wall Street’s current nuclear obsession but too large for the local grid to handle.

The Misunderstanding Creates the Opportunity

The investment opportunity here isn’t simply “buy data center stocks.”

That trade is already crowded.

The better question is: Who benefits when data centers can no longer wait for the grid?

That points investors toward a different group of companies…

Natural gas generator makers, turbine suppliers, microgrid developers, battery storage providers, fuel cell companies, transformer manufacturers, switchgear suppliers, cooling specialists, engineering firms, advanced nuclear developers, uranium miners, and nuclear fuel processors.

Some of these companies are mature industrial giants. Others are small, speculative firms.

Some are public. Many are still private. Some will become major winners. Others won’t make it.

That’s why this trade requires selectivity… Because the mistake is assuming every AI power company will win.

But the opportunity is realizing that the market is still underestimating how many different kinds of power AI will require.

The mega-campuses will need huge amounts of electricity.

But the smaller, localized AI centers may need something different: compact, modular, onsite power that can be deployed where the grid can’t keep up.

That’s the misunderstanding…

Investors are looking for the biggest data centers. But some of the best returns may come from powering the smaller ones.

Because the next phase of AI won’t just be built in the cloud… It’ll be built closer to the ground.

And wherever AI goes, power has to get there first.

When most people think about nuclear power, they imagine massive cooling towers rising above the horizon.

They picture billion-dollar construction projects, decades-long permitting battles, and reactors capable of powering entire metropolitan areas.

Even today’s much-discussed small modular reactors (SMRs) somewhat fit that basic mold…

Yes. They’re smaller than conventional reactors, but they’re still utility-scale assets designed to serve regional grids.

Micro modular reactors, however, are different…

In fact, they may represent one of the most overlooked investment opportunities in the entire energy sector.

While investors focus on the race to build the next generation of SMRs, a smaller and potentially more disruptive technology is quietly advancing through testing, licensing, and early deployment.

You see, these reactors aren’t being designed to power cities. They’re being designed to power everything else…

Remote mines. Military bases. Data centers. Ports. Arctic communities. Oil and gas operations. Desalination facilities. Critical infrastructure.

And perhaps someday, even the Moon.

Because the companies pursuing this technology believe the future of nuclear energy isn’t just bigger…

It’s smaller. Much smaller.

And that distinction could create an entirely new market worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decades.

A Different Kind of Nuclear Revolution

Most advanced reactor companies are chasing a familiar goal: they want to build power plants.

But microreactor developers are chasing something entirely different…

They want to replace diesel generators.

That may sound less exciting, but it could ultimately prove more profitable.

You see, today, thousands of remote operations around the world rely on diesel fuel because they have no practical alternative.

Mines in northern Canada. Military installations in remote regions. Islands disconnected from major grids. Arctic settlements. Energy projects far from transmission infrastructure.

The fuel must be shipped, trucked, flown, stored, protected, and eventually burned.

Every step adds cost. Every step adds risk. And every step creates an opportunity for disruption.

But micro modular reactors offer a radically different approach…

Many designs are intended to operate for years before requiring refueling.

Some can be transported in shipping containers, while others are designed to be factory-built and deployed almost like industrial equipment rather than traditional power plants.

The Department of Energy has repeatedly identified remote communities, defense installations, and industrial facilities as among the most promising early markets for microreactors.

Meanwhile, developers are increasingly targeting another customer that barely existed a decade ago: Artificial intelligence.

As AI infrastructure expands, data centers are becoming some of the largest electricity consumers on Earth. But the challenge isn’t simply finding power.

It’s finding reliable power. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week.

Regardless of weather. Regardless of grid congestion. Regardless of geography.

And that is exactly the kind of problem nuclear power was built to solve.

The Hidden Connection to the Commodity Supercycle

Regular readers know we’ve spent years discussing what we believe is a developing commodity supercycle.

The world is demanding more copper. More uranium. More silver. More aluminum. More nickel. More rare earths. More energy.

But what often gets overlooked is where those materials come from…

The next generation of critical mineral deposits won’t necessarily be located beside major population centers or existing power infrastructure.

Many will be developed in remote regions where electricity is scarce, unreliable, or prohibitively expensive.

And that creates an interesting feedback loop…

The commodity boom requires more mines. Those mines require more power. Microreactors could provide that power.

Which in turn enables the production of more commodities needed to build AI infrastructure, electrical systems, advanced manufacturing facilities, and additional nuclear reactors.

The result is a self-reinforcing cycle that shows the commodity story and the nuclear story may be far more connected than most investors realize.

The Military Opportunity

Historically, military spending has often accelerated technological development.

The internet. GPS. Jet engines. Semiconductors. Nuclear energy itself.

Well, microreactors may eventually join that list…

The U.S. Department of Defense has emerged as one of the most important early customers for advanced nuclear technologies.

Project Pele, one of the Pentagon’s flagship microreactor initiatives, is designed to demonstrate transportable nuclear power for military operations.

BWX Technologies is currently manufacturing the reactor core for the project, with power generation expected later this decade.

The appeal is obvious…

Modern military operations consume enormous amounts of energy. Fuel convoys remain vulnerable. Remote bases often depend on diesel generators.

Communications networks, sensors, and advanced weapons systems require increasingly reliable power sources.

And a compact reactor that can operate for years with minimal fuel requirements offers strategic advantages that traditional generators simply can’t match.

For investors, military adoption matters for another reason, too…

Government customers often help technologies survive long enough to reach commercial scale.

The Public Companies Investors Can Watch

The most direct publicly traded microreactor exposure today is probably BWX Technologies…

Unlike many advanced reactor developers, BWXT already operates a substantial business supplying nuclear technology to the U.S. government and naval nuclear programs.

Its involvement in Project Pele gives investors exposure to one of the most visible microreactor demonstrations currently underway.

Another important name is Oklo…

While Oklo is often grouped with the broader advanced reactor industry, its Aurora system targets many of the same end markets that make microreactors attractive: industrial facilities, data centers, remote sites, and military applications. Investors increasingly view the company as a potential bridge between the AI boom and advanced nuclear power.

Then there is NANO Nuclear Energy…

NANO has become one of the purest public microreactor stories available to retail investors.

The company describes itself as the first publicly listed U.S. microreactor developer and is pursuing multiple reactor concepts, including the KRONOS MMR platform.

Its recent regulatory progress at the University of Illinois represents one of the more tangible milestones in the sector.

Investors should understand that NANO remains highly speculative. Like many early-stage reactor developers, it is years away from large-scale commercialization.

But that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad investment. It simply makes it a venture-style investment masquerading as a public stock.

That’s a very different risk profile from a company like BWXT.

Finally, investors should not overlook the picks-and-shovels side of the industry…

Companies such as Centrus Energy and Cameco Corp. will ultimately benefit regardless of which reactor developer wins.

Because nearly all advanced reactor pathways require specialized fuel, enrichment capacity, transportation infrastructure, and fuel-cycle services.

The Private Company That Caught My Attention

Among the private companies pursuing microreactor technology, one stands out because of its unusually asymmetric setup…

That company is Nuclea Energy. And we’ve discussed Nuclea before, but its story deserves another look.

Because it is developing what it calls the Morpheus reactor, a microreactor specifically designed for some of the most compelling early-use cases in the industry…

Remote communities, mining operations, AI data centers, and military installations.

But what makes Nuclea interesting isn’t simply the technology…

It’s the market selection.

Many advanced reactor companies are competing for utility contracts that may take years or even decades to materialize.

Nuclea appears focused on customers who already have an expensive power problem today.

Mining companies don’t need convincing that electricity matters.

Data center operators don’t need convincing that reliability matters.

Military planners don’t need convincing that energy security matters.

The demand already exists. The challenge is delivering a solution.

That’s why I view Nuclea as an asymmetric opportunity…

If microreactors fail to gain widespread adoption, companies like Nuclea may never become major businesses.

But if even a fraction of the targeted markets adopt nuclear microreactors, the addressable opportunity becomes enormous.

The risk is obvious. But the potential reward is difficult to quantify.

And those are often the characteristics that define the most interesting early-stage opportunities.

Why Investors Should Pay Attention Now

Microreactors remain years away from widespread deployment.

Many designs will fail. Some companies will disappear.

Licensing challenges remain significant. Fuel supply remains a bottleneck.

Economics still need to be proven at scale.

Those are real risks.

But that is precisely why the opportunity exists.

Investors tend to notice trends only after they become obvious.

Today, most discussions about nuclear power revolve around large reactors, SMRs, and AI-driven electricity demand.

Microreactors rarely make headlines.

Yet they may ultimately become the technology that extends nuclear power into places it has never reached before.

Not because they replace traditional reactors. Because they serve markets traditional reactors never could.

That distinction may prove far more important than investors currently appreciate.

And if the next decade unfolds the way many energy experts expect, micro modular reactors may become one of the most fascinating—and potentially profitable—corners of the entire nuclear renaissance.