 Hi, everyone. Great to be here with you. Have you been to Slash before? Oh, first time. First time? You gave a keynote look. I've had a pleasure last year. OK. For me, it's also the first time and some amazing conference, probably the best startup conference I've been to. So really great to be here. Maybe before we sort of go into content and topics, like you have very different founder stories in terms of the background and how you got to finding your company. So can you tell us a little bit about how you started your company, why you did it, what's the way there? Yeah, so I've been working in space for more than 10 years. I was working at Airbus, IN Group. The last program I led at Airbus was the European service module, so second biggest space program in Europe. And we were building half of the Orion vehicle, which was bringing back humanity to the moon. And while working on the Orion, on the one hand it's amazing, because as I was saying, you bring back humanity to the moon. On the other hand, it's very frustrating because that capsule cannot be reused, cannot be refueled. And you see the trend that every space vehicle can be rockets, can be capsule, will be as our cars, our ships reusable and will have the capacity to be refueled. So it's kind of you spend days and nights on something that you know in 10 years will become obsolete. So we said with two other people of the team, well, we know how to build capsule, let's get out and let's make something which is really meaningful that will give to Europe its own capacity to go to space stations around the earth, around the moon, which is today a five billion market that will become a 50 billion market. And we can be number one in Europe and we can be the challenger of SpaceX. And so we did it two years ago. We are the first in the world to privately fund such a business. The first in the world also to fly with a green propulsion system. And today we have raised, so after a bit more than two years, 65 million USD. And we've won around about 200 million USD contract. So when we fly our first capsule in February or March next year. Wow, very cool. Daniel? We actually found at ESA straight out of university and we were building sounding rockets and rocket engines there. And we competed also at the same time in a Hyperloop challenge that was organized by Elon Musk. And after actually winning all of the four competitions that SpaceX arranged, they said, you know, can we hire those people? And if you're a US rocket company, it's actually super hard to hire non-US citizens. And so we spoke to those SpaceX VPs and figured, you know, why don't we build our own company? And Elon wanted to hire us for Tesla, but we said, we really don't want to build electric cars. And so we just happened to build a European rocket company. And so we started five years ago, we've built a fully vertically integrated company. So really building from design, manufacturing, testing, and then the actual launch operations of the rocket. And we're targeting our first launch in a couple months from now. So literally full rocket is in the midst of assembly right now. So it's super exciting times. Yeah, I mean, we have our fingers crossed because we've been invested with you guys for, I think, three years now. And of course, like super exciting times now. Yeah. So maybe going a step back, I mean, I've been like watching and reading sci-fi all my life. So I'm very excited about space. But like in general, why is space important? Like what's in it for humanity? Alain. I think space will pretty much disrupt any other industry, whether it is the insurance business, or whether it's providing connectivity to half of the world's population who literally does not have internet access today. It is about, for example, autonomous driving. All those different business models within different industries will just get disrupted through seamless connectivity and through Earth observation that you can literally track on a global scale from day one. Because space, kind of by definition, is global. And so a satellite on a low Earth orbit flies around the planet every one and a half hours. So every one and a half hours, you basically get to overfly the full planet. And it is amazing to see that what was reserved mostly for governments 10, 15 years ago today is very much driven by private companies, by private industries, fueled also by venture capital. And just the cost of actually bringing something to space and operating in space has been decreasing dramatically. So now you literally have companies like Helene building their own space program, basically. That before, only governments would have built. Now Helene is building just with her company and a fairly small team compared to what governments used to do. First to compliment, I think space will have and is having actually a huge impact on humanity in the future in three main areas. One is environment. You mentioned the observation satellites. So all the data we can have from space observation, it's super useful to understand the climate change. It's also very useful to optimize our activities. Just as an example, One Step in India is now serving millions of farmers to optimize the way they use water and fertilizers. So it's very concrete impact how to optimize our activities. This is true for agriculture. This is true for logistics. So understanding the climate and optimizing our activities. This is for environment. The second part is communication. I believe, I may be wrong, perhaps we need to have a meeting in 10 years from now, but I believe in 10, 15 years, 50% of our broadband will come from space. Because if you think about it, the cost of deploying a broadband constellation, especially with launch or cost going down, it's a few billions. And if you think about when we moved from 4G to 5G, it was also a few billions per country in Europe. But with a whole constellation, you cover the world. And with the next generation of launchers, like Starship, so very, very big launcher, the price per kilogram could go down to around about $500, potentially $100. So we'll come at a time when it's just cheaper to not only to operate, but like to repair and to upgrade constellations in space than it is on the ground. There are still some capacity problem, but I think this will be solved. So I think that's going to disrupt the whole telecommunication industry. And the third point is this is more human, but we'll extend our capacity to live and act in space. So we'll do probably wonderful things. We'll do probably horrible things. So what we see now in action in space is more and more city space stations, more and more so in the future military station. And the necessity from a strategic point of view to master these new areas, to use the moon as a potentially tank station because there are lots of water on the moon that can be used for refueling vessels. And if you think about it, you use three times as energy to fly to moon and come back as to go back on Earth, fuel your vehicle and then come back again. So now there is a race to master water at the north of your face. As there was in the past, the race to oil and in the past, the race to gold. I think what is critical is that if we look at the 16th century, we had a technical turning point, which is when suddenly we knew how to build big ships that would cross the ocean. And then we explored. And we're exactly, I think at the same time, we have this technical turning point. We know how to be launchers that will be reusable. We know how to build ships that will be reusable, can be refueled. So we are at this point when we have the capacity to start traveling in space in a complete different manner. And then as humans will explore, it will not take 10 years. It didn't take 10 years in the 16th century. It will take perhaps one century. But we are the beginning of this new era. And so we don't know exactly what it will bring, but I think it will be transformational as it has been transformational to discover what we were calling the New World in the 16th century. Fascinating. So Daniel, you mentioned that in the past, there has mainly been governments that funded and operated space programs. And then over the last, I don't know, 10 years, like there's a lot of private companies, guys like you studying companies, venture capital money. What was the trigger here? Was it just Elon Musk having the guts to do it and then others following? Or was there anything else that's driving that? I think there's probably a few different elements which came together. A few bold investors who said, yes, I will actually put money into a space company. And that actually just happened basically throughout the last five, six, seven years. When we raised our seed round in 2018, people would just ask us, what did you guys smoke? You're completely crazy. Secondly, technology became available. And actually a lot of universities built a lot of technology, for example. And then instead of those people and researchers actually going into the big corporates, like the Airbuses and the Boeing and whatnot, they actually decided, you know, I could actually also build my own satellite and finance it with a couple, tens of millions of dollars from the VCs. And to a point now already where you can literally order satellite online. You just go on a website, you click all of the components, put them into a shopping cart, you'll literally buy a complete satellite online. And that's just something that just five or 10 years ago was not available. So the barriers of entry actually into the space industry have been dropping massively, such that we know a lot of companies which have nothing to do with space per se, try to look into how can I use space to actually disrupt my own industry and get a competitive advantage over my competition. So we see, for example, all of the automotive companies looking massively at how can I provide connectivity so I can do autonomous driving. And once autonomous driving is there, how can I actually entertain all of the people? And it's not that you basically all have seamless connectivity through 5G networks. So basically again here, the nice advantage that space provides is it is global. And for example, a car company would not have to deal with all the telecom operators in 100 different countries basically. So again, they use it kind of really to disrupt your own business. And I think a lot of people just also got comfortable with the fact that space is not just up for governments and maybe defense ministries, but it's actually a very commercially driven industry. And so if you take a look actually at the numbers, 90% of all the satellites that were launched last year have been commercial satellites. And I think it's, as Helen said, I think we're just at the beginning of what will grow even further. But ultimately, it's a mix of people, capital availability and tech availability. Let's talk about Europe versus US for a second. I mean, I think like a big driver is for you guys, at least I know is that we want to have a launch capacity in Europe actually. But are we just playing catch up with the US or is there sort of areas where we are actually leading where we can really beat the US? So perhaps we can speak today and then in the future. Today there are some specific areas where we are excellent. Earth observation, for example, we are one of the best in the world. Telecommunication, we wear. I think now we're starting, probably we will not be. Launcher, I mean SpaceX disrupts completely the launcher business and I'm super happy to see companies like Isar embracing the challenge and hopefully building the next European launcher that we'll be able to compete. So launcher we have a problem right now and capsule, so my business, we had nothing in Europe. In the future, I'm pretty optimistic actually because if we look back in history, let's take the example of Airbus. When we started Airbus in Europe, it was a crazy project because Boeing was far much advanced than the technology we had in Europe and we had two steps. The first step was a catch up and in certain areas like reusable launchers, we need to master these technology points. We have to catch up. It will take five, six years, whatever. Capsule, we need to master the technology same. We need to catch up. So that's kind of phase one. And then there is phase two. Phase two is when Airbus said, okay, I'm bringing on the market the A320, which was a revolution. And I think we need to be a bit border in Europe and think, okay, what is the concept that's going to be Starship or what will be Starship in 10, 15 years? So in terms of transportation. And one of the key technology that we need to master and work on right now, because there is a catch up but with a different concept than Starship and I'm sure you have some ideas and I also have some ideas, probably we can come with the equivalent of A320 and then disrupt again. So there is this catching up, but also this boldness in thinking that we need to reinstigate in the European Space Agency and also in the investors, if I may say so, to let the Americans have a portfolio management where they can be company of super-hardy, super-hardy worlds and then their company, which are more like in the stream. Yeah. I think there's also one fundamental topic that Europe inherently is better than pretty much anyone in the world and that is manufacturing. So I'll tell you why it's important. Up until a few years ago, companies and governments were building individual satellites. So it's literally a single satellite that would go around the planet. The challenge with that is, well, once the satellite passed over you, you'll have to wait a couple of days until it come back to the same position. So people came up with satellite constellations where they would just have so many satellites in space that at any point in time, you always have a satellite above your head. And what it requires then is manufacturing capability that you can actually only build one or two satellites a year, but you have to build hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of satellites and that's also, for example, rockets and capsules every year. And when we started off, Europe was literally building about five rockets a year. And when I take a look at our capabilities now with probably about 100 times less employees, we can actually build 10 times more rockets so there's an efficiency factor in terms of people of probably three orders of magnitude. And that's the part where Europe is really, really strong. It is manufacturing capability and the automation in manufacturing. So we actually built a rocket engine every couple of days versus the established industry which built orbital class rocket engines maybe every six months or so. And so the automation also that Europe inherently has from other industries like the automotive industry, we can basically apply in the space industry and really take a strong competitive advantage over anyone in the world actually. And sorry, yeah. Just wanted to add perhaps two points. The first is that there is a need for more competition and we've seen that in the expression company because we just signed a deal with the first private space station Axiom and they didn't sign with Boeing, they didn't sign with North Pole GroupMind, they only signed with SpaceX and with us because they want players who are affordable and reliable. And the second point I wanted to mention is we are now discussing contracts with India, with UAE, with Saudi. These countries, they want to be in between China and US and here we have a unit card that we can play. Interesting. And Daniel, you told me something really interesting about like access to engineers globally backstage. Can you maybe repeat that for the audience? I find that really fascinating. Yeah, so it's a bit specific to building rockets. The United States is, as of today, the only place in the world that actually operates private markets, also, markets operated by private companies. Outside of the United States, it's basically only governments. And when you're a US citizen, you actually need a Department of Defense approval to work outside the United States on markets and vice versa, you barely can work as a non-US citizen in a US rocket company. So basically, the US markets, kind of through their export control regulations, is kind of building their own market locally. But all of the other 200 countries basically have to work outside the United States as well because they're legally just not allowed to actually work in the US on rocketry. So first, obviously, it's a great topic because we can hire people globally. We now have 400 people from 50 nationalities and people come from all over the world because it's literally a place where they can actually work and they're allowed to work on markets. It's really interesting. You mentioned Airbus before and like Airbus, obviously, big European success story. I think one of the sort of critical factors was always that like every country in Europe wanted to have like a part of Airbus and that led to a certain fragmentation. Is that an issue that we have in space as well? Yes, we have in space in Europe. This was also true in the US, what we call GeoReturn. So if you are Italy or Germany and you want to participate to the next launch or program, for example, you give 100 million to your principal agency, which takes 15% management fee, a bit more than a VC. And then 85% person comes back to the country. Now there is lots of debates and I find it very good to change the rule because of course, if you function like that, then you cannot choose your suppliers. And so the first way to change is of course to get private funding because then you are free to use that funding the way it comes. But still, the space is a mix between private business and public business and the space agencies will stay a very important anchor client. So three ways to change the rule, which are currently being discussed. One is very simple, when agency has a service provider as NASA did since already 206. So they buy a service, meaning a country can get its return, not only industrial return, but also service return. For example, I'm UK, I'm investing 1 million. I get nothing in my industry, but I get the right to use the launcher of Daniel, for example, or the capsule of Helen. That's the way to have more flexibility. The second way is to do that with more flexibility inside the European Space Agency. I don't want to enter into technical details. And the third way, which is actually a revolutionary, is to say we do that exposed. So let's imagine you bid for the next European launcher, then you do the fundraising and not the European Space Agency. So you go to Germany, to France, and say, okay, you choose your suppliers and that's my consortium, and you bid with the letter of intent of the countries, saying if Daniel wins, then we will be the anchor client and we will invest, I don't know, 50% of the development costs in the launcher of Daniel. So these three options are currently being discussed, and hopefully by 25, we'll see some reforms being applied, and that's an absolute necessity to unleash the competitiveness of the European industry. It's also not that governments are super quick always, so we would love governments, obviously, to be faster. But I think they've seen also in some of the other countries, like the US specifically, that you can actually even run a lot of nationally critical and sovereign technology based on a multitude of suppliers from the industry. You don't have to build it as a government yourself, and it's kind of the one thing that Europe starts to realize like, oh, we actually have to not build rocket ourselves because they're gonna be expensive and over time and whatnot, we can actually just procure the services from the industry. And it's the same for rockets, as well as for satellites, as well as for research in space. So we're seeing quite a bit of change currently undergoing, also from an institutional and a government perspective, which is very positive. Yeah. So I understand that like, you guys wanna launch in the first half of next year, you guys also wanna be in space next year, so what's next then? Like, what's the business after that? Well, okay, what's next in the business? So we have two launchers next year to capsule being launched, or baby one and our teenage one. With that, we de-risk the re-entry risk, which is the highest risk. And then we'll fly the final capsule, if everything goes well in 27. And the business is very simple, our clients are private space station, they are space agencies. They buy a full mission, they give us 150 million, which is very good price. And then we bring cargo to a station around the earth. Around the moon it's more expensive, 450 million, 500 million, the mission. And then we bring back. And okay, that's step one, and afterwards of course we want to fly humans, which is step two, and to fly humans, then we need the support of member states. Because cargo is a business that can be privately funded. Our risk you ask for human is, I believe not something that can be privately funded. First it's building, building, building more rockets, because ultimately our customers are actually now requesting satellite launch all the way throughout the next 10 years. Because they're so afraid, actually they won't be able to get their hands on any rocket launch, because there's a huge supply and demand imbalance right now, and a huge scarcity of actual rocket launch. So actually a company like Amazon, Amazon last year bought up pretty much the whole free worlds market of rocket launch for the next couple of years to launch their own satellite constellations. So they just pour in billions and billions of dollars just to secure access to space. So our goal in that case is really to keep building more rockets, scaling our own manufacturing capabilities, so we can actually put out a rocket a week. And again to put into reference, all of Europe right now together is this year probably building maybe one rocket, and we want to build one every week. So this year slash I think the word AI needs to be on every panel. So does AI play a role in what you guys do, and if so what? So yes and yes, we use AI within the company of course. We will start using co-pilot next week actually. And we use AI to write job descriptions, press releases, et cetera. So let's say to increase our efficiency. And we use AI, we started using AI actually for the design of our engine ourselves. We do engines which are very similar to rocket engines, when we fly to the moon. And for the first iteration we did it like normally, but now we're starting to use AI actually design a second generation of the rocket engine. So next year when we test our first workhorse engine, it will be an AI designed engine. Again here we actually use it also in manufacturing. So every time we actually 3D print our rocket engines from high thermal resistance metals. And in the printing process you basically build layer by layer. And it's a process that takes usually about three days to build all the components for a rocket engine. And we actually take pictures of each of those layers that we print and let the AI predict whether a print will be successful or not. Such that if it actually predicts it's not going to be successful, you can already stop the print halfway restarted so you don't lose two days of machine time. It's one of the many applications we have within the company also in manufacturing in AI. Cool. Do you expect, I mean there's still like relatively few space startups in Europe I would say. Do you expect that if you guys are successful next year there will be sort of a Cambrian explosion and there will be lots of startups or is it like a niche area in the startup world? So I don't think it's niche because at the end of the day we speak about huge businesses. I guess you have turnover of billions. I also plan to have turnover of billions. It's more like an infrastructure business at least for the transportation part and for the constellation part. It's a business where you have very few winners because it's hard because it's CAPEC intensive and I think it's a winner takes all business. So that's a bit how I see it. I'm not sure that we'll have dozens of thousands of startups because competence is where there will be very, very few succeeding but the one will succeed. There'll be the Google, the Amazon, et cetera of space. Yeah, I agree. So it depends on how do you define a space company. Amazon to me is a space company. Same as John Deere as a tractor manufacturer is actually through space want to connect every single of their million trucks across the world. And to me, they basically use space so they're to a certain extent a space company. Same goes for Apple or for Microsoft. They all invest billions into their own space programs and I think space will kind of play a similar role as the internet where it's not that in a big corporation you have kind of the internet department. It's like the people who deal with the internet but everyone is using it. Everyone is just kind of integrating it into their daily life. And I think it will be very similar for space where everyone will just use space data whether it's about analyzing the CO2 of your supply chain or whether it's about providing connectivity or actually part of your own business model and your own service that you provide to your customers. I think space will just intrinsically be kind of injected into all of the different areas and levels in pretty much any company globally. It will be on every balance sheet somewhere. Great. Maybe last quick question because we have only one and a half minutes left. So when Elon Musk has the vision to die on Mars, how do you see like space in 20 years? Well, what's your big idea of where this is going? So I think space will have become much more accessible. Also, as you were mentioning, Daniel in everyone's life and all mentioned are the exploration companies who make space more cooperative and sustainable. And that's something for me very important. Space is part of our future. We can build it in a confrontational manner which is nowadays happening. We can build it in a cooperative and sustainable manner. And this is at the core of our design. We start with capsule, we probably do other things in the future, but everything we'll do will be cooperative and sustainable. I think dying on Mars alone is a pretty sad story. So I would rather want to use space to really make sure that we actually manage our planet properly. And I think there's a lot more stuff that we actually need to do space for to literally manage our planet, to operate our planet, other than just flying to Mars and beyond. I think it is a great topic because it actually also excites a lot of people to become rocket engineers and rocket scientists to actually get into the space industry. But ultimately, I think space is all about actually making sure that we can live on our planet for longer than the next 10,000 years. And then Daniel, thanks a lot, that was great. Thank you.