Daniel Perez Grande, PhD - Co-Founder of INEAI SPACE

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom podcast. We have Daniel Perez with us today. He's a PhD, co-founder at, uh, IEN AI Space.

Yes, ENI.

Yeah, ENI Space. Uh, PhD in plasma physics and nuclear fusion. Very interesting. Uh, so aerospace engineer, uh, and he loves to think in terms of dreaming atoms, not in bits. In the greater Madrid area. Dan, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you've been up to.

Thank you, Charles. Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, so I think you covered the basics. So, you know, aerospace engineer. I did a PhD after a short— well, short— 5 years in aerospace industry because I wanted to work more closely to the space sector. And then when I finished the PhD, actually, that was 7 years ago, myself and some colleagues from the university, we decided to start Spain's first electric propulsion company for satellites, which, you know, not so sure how much the audience is, you know, knowledgeable about these topics. But basically in the space sector, which is the space sector that— or the sector that I work in, basically the amount of countries that have access to electric propulsion technology or ion thrusters is basically equally the same as the ones that have access to rocket launchers. So it's a kind of like advanced propulsion technology, you know, that again is kind of like on the top of companies, spacefaring countries and companies. So we are very proud to, again, to be like Spain's first company, let's say, fully focused on space mobility, electric space mobility. Aside from that, grew up in New York, as you can probably hear from my accent, although I am, I am Spanish. The company is also based in Spain. Um, and yeah, like, we've been going for 7 years, looking forward to the, you know, to the next, uh, you know, the next few years, seeing if we can, you know, or when we will get to scale really the company. And that's, that's what we're focusing on right now, let's say, scaling the business, um, towards potentially becoming, I, I hope, one of the major players focused on space mobility worldwide.

Interesting. And with your PhD in plasma physics and nuclear fusion, why not focus on um, or why did you decide to go with space and not, uh, nuclear fusion itself for energy, right? That seems to be like a 10 to 100x bigger market.

Yeah, so in fact, um, you know, the PhD, the program was in plasma physics and nuclear fusion, but, um, the application that I worked on for was for plasma engines or ion engines. So right off the bat from the PhD, I was already working on, uh, on space focus. Um, I've always held a very strong interest, uh, on nuclear fusion And in fact, one of the things I always say to myself is, hey, if we ever sell the company, I'd love to go back to Fusion and work on those devices because I think it's a very, very interesting topic. But for me, the priority of the time, and this comes back to, you know, a lot of my background and a lot of my upbringing was always to be able to work in the space sector. That's always been, I think, my dream. And it's one that I'm getting to live right now. So very happy about that.

Are you trying to create an European SpaceX?

Well, I mean, I was just actually, just before the podcast, I was recently, sorry, looking at the video from, you know, SpaceX, looking at the, you know, the X, sorry, the AI-1 satellites, you know, all the data center stuff. I mean, you know, we're gonna be a much smaller company probably than SpaceX. And I think Europe is a little bit different when it comes down to creating these kind of like big companies, right? But we do wanna be a major player when it comes to mobility. One thing that I think is interesting to, to start to mention here, I'm sure will come up in the podcast, uh, during the, you know, as, as we progress, but, um, in the space sector, it's a little bit like the automotive sector, right? So in the automotive sector, you have companies that are building basically the cars themselves, and then you have a lot of companies that are building the engines, right? And those— the reason behind that is because it's completely different technologies to build an engine than it is to build, let's say, the rest of the car in the automotive industry. So in the space sector, in fact, it actually works in a very similar way. The companies that are building satellites, or, you know, satellite buses, all the kind of like AI satellites that are now, or data centers in space that are now becoming all the rage, they don't typically build the propulsion systems that are going on those satellites either. SpaceX does do that, and there's a couple of other companies doing that like K2 or Apex, but you need basically like massive, massive access to capital in order to do that. And in fact, most of these companies, what they end up doing is just buying a propulsion company that's already done all the R&D that was needed to develop the technology. And in fact, that R&D is not minor. We've raised up to now around €11 million, which is again a very different order of magnitude than SpaceX. Still not bad by European and especially Spanish standards when it comes down to the space sector. And at the end of the day, again, what we're trying to do is, let's say, focus on that mobility suit or mobility solution for spacecraft becoming a major player there and then progressing on from there. Where we will go from there, let's say whether we start doing, for example, our own platforms or start looking into things like, I don't know, engines for asteroid mining and things like that, that is something that is definitely on our roadmap. We do want to become very much a part of the space industry and we do like to dream big, but we are very focused right now on, let's say, making sure that we are able to sell our first products, right? And making sure that we can scale the production of those products. So that we can also generate basically heritage, right? And trust from the industry, which is, as you probably can imagine, the space industry, because everything is so expensive, it's a very risk-adverse industry, even though SpaceX completely changed that profile of companies and allowed a lot of other kind of like what's called new space companies. So kind of startups and so on to come in and play a little bit with that risk factor. But we're, you know, at the end of the day, you still need to demonstrate, you still need to generate that trust from the industry. So that's what we're focusing on right now. But as you said, you know, we do like to dream, dream big. And who knows, you know, I'm not sure SpaceX level. I think that's, you know, that's, that's always a little bit, a little bit out there. But yeah, definitely one of the major players in the mobility ecosystem within the space sector.

And what can Europe provide to you in terms of propulsion? There's funding from the government in Europe, but I think it's always more conservative in Europe. And is it actually a blessing or a burden them to get there?

So look, one of my colleagues, one of my co-founders always says that building a space company, so doing entrepreneurship in the space sector in Spain, which is, if you write that in Spanish, it's actually like 3 Es. So emprender en España en espacio is kind of like shooting yourself in the foot, right? 'Cause it's very, very difficult. It's interesting 'cause when we started the company, I think we were very hopeful and optimistic and we said, hey, nobody else is doing this. We're gonna get a ton of funding, we're gonna get, you know, all the attention and so on. And it turned out to be much more difficult than we thought, right? Because a lot of people are like, a lot of investors especially are like, why would you do this from Spain? Why would you do this from Europe, right? Um, so, um, so look, uh, so it's— I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna say it's a blessing. It's definitely not a blessing. Um, I wouldn't say it's all— it's a burden. There is something about, um, you know, doing this from your hometown, right? Um, you know, being close to your family, let's say, having access to that part of life, I think is also important. And it keeps you, you know, it helps with the balance or balancing I think it's out. Of course, being an entrepreneur is very highly demanding, so you need to, I think, balance things out with other things in your life. So being able to do that from, let's say, somewhere where you're comfortable is, is, um, is, is good. And I think, you know, hey, I love the European lifestyle. Um, you know, I'm very happy. You know, we're very— we're all— I think we're very happy here, and, and we like to, to, to work on the, on the stuff that we work, uh, on, uh, from here. That being said, um, you know, we are obviously right now looking into opening up shop in the US. Um, we're going to be, let's say, opening up our first, uh, US subsidiary later in the— later in the year, um, uh, in the Washington, uh, area. So that's going to be your tentpole towards, uh, towards the US. And I, I hope that we can, you know, we can get a little bit the best of both worlds, right? So do this from a place that we feel comfortable, um, and but also be able to access, let's say, the US market, which of course is the, the largest space market that currently exists, right? I do want to say something which is, uh, you know, uh, I think a lot of people out there might, might, uh, not be, uh, aligned with this, but the lack of funding, right, or the limited funding and capital that you have access to in Europe. I mean, there is something to say about the fact that that kind of sharpens your wits, right? If you have less to work with, you're not going to kind of like brute force the approach towards solving a particular technology. You're gonna do what you can with what you have. And at the end, in my opinion, that kind of forces a little bit of like engineering discipline into the development of new products., and you can in fact, in my opinion, come up with, you know, a very, very good product just because of the fact that, hey, you cannot, you know, you don't just have access to this massive amount of capital, so you need to really be smart on how you spend your money, who you hire, and that kind of stuff, and so that sharpens a little bit your wits to, in order to, I think, you know, at the end of the day, hopefully create a better product, but it's definitely not a blessing, right?

You know, I think like my brain went to one place with like all the founders and CEOs that I speak to and somewhat aware of the geopolitical situation in Europe, and that is defense, right? And then I read that, yeah, indeed you do some defense. I think, I think that's the angle, right? Because, uh, Europe is very vulnerable, um, not only from a geographical position but I think Europe is, is quite naive, right? That just like my native Canada, it's like, um, it's just they think, uh, I don't know, that someone else will have their back or something. But I could— yeah, people are worried about like, uh, Russia and China and Europe because mostly because I don't think literally that it could sustain like an attack from, from these players if it happens, right? And not in the full-mongering camp, but definitely to stimulate urgency in people. It's like, hey, if we can watch these guys from space and if we can react or intercept missiles from space, then that is a gigantic advantage, right? So what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so I mean, I, I completely agree with you. I think we have been, uh, very late to the game, uh, right, uh, in terms of waking up. I mean, we've had, you know, the aggression against Ukraine happen already back in 2014, right, with Crimea. And then, like, you know, it's been going on. And then, you know, there hasn't been, you know, probably as much of a coherent response from Europe to that situation as I think most— a lot of the European citizens would have liked. It is true that, you know, at the end of the day, Europe in itself, you know, going back a little bit and looking back into the history, is a huge peace project. Right? I mean, because we've been killing each other for thousands of years. Like, one of my co-founders is Dutch, and, you know, 400 years ago we would have been, you know, probably killing each other, right? So I think, I think, you know, there is something to say about Europe being kind of like really one of the biggest peace projects in the history of humanity. But that being said, you know, it requires a lot of compromises, right? And one of the compromises is, hey, you have to, you know, get, you know, whatever, 20-something, 20-odd countries on board to do whatever, right? So definitely, I think everyone here will say that, hey, yeah, the response has not been what could have been been. But thankfully, you know, even, even if we're a little bit late to the game, I think Europe is waking up to this. If you look at, for example, you know, particularly concerning to the space sector, ISAI, which is the biggest— another company that has a little bit of a difficult name to pronounce, but is one of the biggest companies. It's probably the biggest company right now in Europe, space, you know, space companies in Europe. And they just raised €1 billion, right, on a €10 billion valuation. And that's driven, I would say, mostly— and I think they've recognized this— by the defense applications. Because what they do is a synthetic aperture radar satellite, which basically can image the ground, you know, even if there's like clouds or low visibility or that kind of stuff. And actually also provide some kind of like 3D representation of what's happening on the ground. So Eyesight is killing it. You know, huge kudos to them. There's going to be You know, ISAR on the same week, ISAR, the aerospace German company that is doing launchers, also raised, right, some millions to secure, I think, responsive access to space. So I think we are moving in the right direction. We're definitely behind US and China. And it is also very interesting to see that, you know, that I think we are finally waking up to the idea that Hey, space, even though there's all these agreements about, hey, non-militarization of space, non-proliferation of weapons in space, you know, back dating back to the '60s, um, that even if it's not going to be a kinetic type of warfare in space, you know, hopefully we will not be blowing— nobody will be blowing up satellites in space, because if they do, that's going to make things a lot more complicated. Because once you start generating debris in space, you can— you end up generating much more and more debris because these debris fragments collide with other satellites and you end up potentially losing the whole of low Earth orbit. Right. So I hope it's not going to be a kinetic type of warfare, but it's definitely going to be a kind of jamming, spoofing, you know, this kind of things where you're trying to basically intercept the signal or the data that's coming from a satellite. And I think Europe is definitely moving in that direction towards having more and more capabilities in space. Germany and France, I think Germany particularly, is doing a huge push towards ensuring that, um, that there is, uh, you know, that, that, that the space, uh, sector or the space segment within, within the defense, uh, vertical is, uh, let's say, properly, um, addressed, right? Um, so, so yes, I agree with you. Let's say we're a little bit late to the game, but I think people are waking up. And it's interesting to see also that this kind of waking up is a somehow also a not so much coordinated response at the European level, but it's more countries just saying, you know what, enough is enough. I'm going to do my own thing. I'm going to spend, you know, 5 billion like Germany is doing on building, you know, the satellite defense layer, right? Because I don't want to wait on anybody else. So, you know, hopefully this means that, you know, that we will see more and more interest of the community onto the defense play. And for us in particular, for E&I, let's say, we've always been very much in touch with the defense arena. Arena. Our first client was actually the Spanish Air Force. We're in touch with the Spanish Space Force for a number of projects. And in fact, we will be announcing soon a collaboration with a German company also very focused on mobility aspects related to defense or with a big application for defense. So yes, we're definitely moving in that direction, even though we will not be forgetting about, let's say, your civilian applications and the civilian routes, let's say, because there's definitely still a lot of satellites that need to be put up there. And that need to have their own propulsion systems. And that's a gap that we're also trying to fill. But, um, yeah, we're going to try to do both.

And the very next product, what is it, um, and how commercially viable is it? Because building these things is very expensive, selling them is a long sales cycle, right? So tell me a bit more about that.

Yeah, so look, um, as I said, you know, as you've probably noticed while we were talking, I always refer to what we do as a mobility company, right? ENI is a mobility company. So, um, there's a big difference. There's a fundamental difference for us, uh, with regards to what you typically would find in a propulsion company, which is the fact that, um, for us, propulsion— let's say it's not only about— or, or the, the fact that you can have a satellite that is mobile or agile in space is not only related to the propulsion system that's, uh, that's working on the satellites, the, the engine that's actually— or the little rocket that's moving it from a different— from one orbit to the next. It's also about, uh, First of all, making sure that you're making the right selection when it comes down to selecting the right propulsion system for you. And then making sure that you have the correct and most optimal maneuvering strategy once you actually have the satellite up there so that you can conserve as much propellant, power, or other budgets that you have up there, right? And this is actually a very hard engineering problem. So our products, or let's say we're not building a single product, we're actually building an ecosystem of products that are both software and hardware. Space. So we have currently on a commercial phase, uh, our first software product, which is called 360. So 360 is a space and mission, uh, analysis— sorry, space mobility and mission analysis software. Basically what this enables, uh, in, in the key aspect related to mobility is to, uh, perform the right selection of a propulsion system based on the, uh, let's say, right requirements that are coming from your mission with regards to what that propulsive— those propulsive phases are going to like, right? That's one thing, right? Then we are going to be this year finally qualifying our propulsion systems in orbit. That means that we have actually 3 flights planned where we're going to try to get as much heritage, as much data as we can from the propulsion system, right? And then if that data is good, if the heritage is good, which, you know, we've done everything on our side on the ground that we can do in order to ensure that, then we're going to start selling those thrusters. That's actually going to be the first product because based on the technology that we've developed, which we can go a little bit into it if you want, we can scale those products to different classes of satellites. So right now, the satellites that we're aiming for are satellites under 100 kilograms of mass, which is already a pretty decent satellite in terms of the capabilities that you can have. But of course, if you look at things like, you know, like the Starlink satellites or other bigger satellites, you're going to be moving towards the thousands of kilograms, right? And we will produce a next product that is going to be focused on that at least 100 to 1,000 kilogram range. That's going to be starting at the end of, uh, yeah, the kickoff of that is going to be starting at the end of this year, and hopefully will be commercial by the end of next year. And then the last thing we want to do is actually we want, we want to, um, uh, let's say, um, join those two verticals. So the software and the hardware, uh, verticals. And we want to, uh, move into what we call smart thrusters, right? So at the end of the day, what you want to do, especially if you have a constellation, is to not have to be sending the commands to the satellites of when they need to move every time. Right. Because you're going to have thousands of satellites and that's actually not viable at all. So what we're going to be doing is potentially mixing those two solutions and producing a final product, which will be, hey, you have a thruster that actually knows from the information that it's getting from the spacecraft, from the information that it has in terms of navigation, it knows when it needs to carry out a maneuver for the satellite, either to keep it in its orbit or to, or to, let's say, maneuver it out of a potential collision. Or, um, uh, you know, or to move it into a different orbit if that's, um, if that's needed, right? So, so that's, that's what we're going to be aiming for, um, you know, in next— that's what's next in line. Right now it's fully focused on, you know, getting users, uh, for 360 licenses and finalizing the development for Athena thrusters, which again are going to be commercial towards the end of the year with quite a little bit of flight heritage for our first product, and then moving on to those kind of like secondary products that I just mentioned.

It. It's pretty intriguing. Do you feel you have the support of Spain? Like, does Spain have interest? And what's like their, I don't know, placeholder company that's currently leading? What's their NASA?

Yeah, so Spanish— Spain does have a Spanish space agency, um, which actually started, uh, just a few years ago. Um, I do have to say that most of the, uh, space agencies in Europe are a little bit different from, uh, what typically find, well, from NASA, in the sense that NASA actually develops technologies, right? Whereas a lot of the European space agencies basically contract the development of new products, technologies, or missions to the industry, right? So it's a little bit actually more aligned with industry. They fund a lot of the European industry. NASA also does that with the small business contracts and, and these kind of like contracts that are aimed at delivering capabilities and so on. So it's not that different from NASA, but, but it is true that they don't necessarily develop their own technology. Technologies. Now, um, I do feel that we have support from Spain, uh, or obviously the order of magnitude of that support is, um, you know, probably not at the same level as NASA. We received last year— or 2 years ago, sorry— we closed an R&D project with Spanish Space Agency worth €2.5 million, and that one's focused on developing the technologies needed to scale the production of our propulsion systems. So we're putting a lot of money onto, let's say, doing the R&D in order to translate the prototype that we have now into an actual, you know, product that we can sell and that we can scale, right? That we can, let's say, scale from an industrial point of view. So we do feel supported in that sense. There's other programs that we're going to be applying for at the European level as well, probably the European Innovation Cluster and, you know, things like that where you are kind of getting a little bit of money to do that scaling. But look, at the end of the day, the funding itself is good, but I think what we need to do as a company is just focus on our clients, right, and scale based on the demand from the industry, which what we see now is that, you know, it's still there, right? You know, people always joke around with the space industry that it kind of happened in the same way as phones, right? Phones started out to be like, you know, super big phones, kind of these brick phones, and then they kind of like dropped into like something a little bit smaller that you carry in your pocket. And then once you started to need more capability, they went up again. And now we have kind of again these kind of like bigger phones. right? So the satellites have gone, you know, through a very similar cycle, with the exception that obviously carrying mass to orbit is still one of the most expensive things or most expensive parts of a mission, right? So, you know, we do still see that the importance of miniaturization, of making sure that you can— hey, you can still do compact things. You can still do technologies that are not very heavy, not very big on volumes. That is still— that still has a lot of pull, I would say, from, from the industry, which again is, it's just, you know, there's still a big interest in saving as much mass as possible. Of course, if you're, you know, if you're SpaceX and you're developing Starship and you don't care about, uh, you know, the mass of your things because of your satellites, because you're going to be able to, you know, you own the launcher, you're going to be able to put it up into space, then, then that's different. That's a different, you know, equation fundamentally. Um, but one thing that I do have to say regarding this, which I think is, you know, I think a lot of the my peers might not agree with me, which is something that I said already a few years back, which is, you know, people were very excited about Starlink, uh, Starship, right, about like the massive amount of mass that you can get to orbit, um, on, on, uh, Starship. But what we're seeing right now is that Starship is fundamentally going to be used for, uh, SpaceX satellites, right? So what happens to the industry if, if you simply do not have a You know, uh, you know, this, this massive, uh, launcher that is— was supposed to reduce tenfold the cost of mass to orbit, what happens if that does not happen? And then I think people will start to, you know, look back again into, well, hey, there was a— there was actually an interest in delivering satellites that were not that big, that were, you know, that where the engineering goes into reducing mass and also reducing cost. So we will see what happens. I think that, you know, uh, the industry is still evolving a lot. Um, but, uh, but yeah, that's, that's, uh, I think some, some points that I make. And how will you finance all of that, you're raising another round soon, or— Yeah, yeah, we're actually raising our Series A right now. Um, so we went through 2 rounds, uh, pre-seed and, uh, yeah, seed a couple years ago. Um, that was a total of, uh, yeah, $3.4, $3.5 million. We've raised the additional capital up to, up to $11 million in, um, in, uh, public funds, right? And, um, at the moment, let's say we're looking for something of the order of, uh, multiple tens of millions of euros, that's going to be heavily invested into, you know, making sure that we have, let's say, these production lines set up so that we can, you know, pull out hundreds of thrusters so we can scale, or let's say, software products in a way that we can deliver to, you know, hundreds of customers across the world and that we can keep delivering on our promise of further products, the ones that I mentioned before. Regarding, again, smart thrusters or next iterations of the thruster. And of course, one of the, the things that we're also going to be doing is, um, let's say focusing on internationalization. So we're going to be moving, uh, you know, opening up in, in the US, as I mentioned, and also potentially some other places in Europe.

Love that. Dan, where can people find out more about you and the company?

So you can, uh, look for us at LinkedIn or, uh, yeah, just our website. So that's, um, ENI. So I'll spell it again, I-E-N-A-I dot space for the website. Or if you just look for eni.space— or sorry, eni.space at LinkedIn, um, then you can, you can find all our updates there.

How is Dan and