Manufacturing in orbit has long been a logistical nightmare, largely because getting products back to Earth is expensive and rare. Most companies wait for International Space Station slots or rely on niche return vehicles. But Ashley Pilipiszyn, founder of startup Besxar, found a different path. She negotiated a deal with SpaceX to prototype an orbital semiconductor factory across a dozen Falcon 9 booster flights. The rocket’s first stage made that round trip 163 times last year alone, offering a frequency no other vehicle can match.

Pilipiszyn argues that building chips on Earth means fighting physics. Terrestrial fabs require massive infrastructure to create pressurized clean rooms that keep out microscopic dust. In space, the vacuum is free. Besxar raised nearly $14 million, including a $9 million seed round led by Dauntless Ventures, to test this theory. Their initial “fabships”—small canisters carrying wafer samples—flew on a July Starlink mission. Despite a data system malfunction in one unit, the results were promising. The returned samples had significantly less particulate matter than terrestrial controls.

“We’re at a time where it’s actually more cost-effective to go where the physics already works,” Pilipiszyn told TechCrunch. The company plans to iterate over the next two years, moving from simple exposure tests to heating wafers and depositing materials. The end goal is supplying advanced chipmakers with precursors for power-regulating chips used in data centers and electric vehicles. This approach sidesteps the heavy infrastructure costs of ground-based production by leveraging the natural environment of low Earth orbit.

Scaling remains the biggest hurdle. While Besxar aims to produce thousands of wafers per fab, current return volumes are tiny. Success depends entirely on the availability of cheap, high-capacity launch vehicles like SpaceX’s Starship or competitors such as Rocket Lab. Pilipiszyn believes the transport layer is finally maturing enough to support the application layer. If Starship becomes operational as planned, space-based manufacturing might shift from a scientific curiosity to a viable supply chain node. Until then, Besxar is betting that reusable boosters can bridge the gap.