The Space Renaissance: From Sovereign Monopoly to Industrial Asset Class
Geneva, 27 January 2026
Dear Valued Investor,
For most of the modern era, space was a sovereign monopoly. It was a domain accessible only to superpowers with the capital to burn on prestige and the geopolitical imperative to secure orbital supremacy.
Launches were national events, satellites were quasi-artisanal creations, and the timeline for innovation was measured in decades. Today, that monopoly has fractured, giving way to a relentless renaissance, where speed is the new currency and private operators are the new superpowers.
The clearest signal of this regime change is the looming investor event for the sector’s bellwether, Elon Musk’s SpaceX. With a potential IPO valuation near $1.5 trillion later this year, the market is acknowledging that space is no longer a speculative frontier but an industrial vertical.
To capture the full magnitude of this shift, we have aligned the architecture of our Great Visionaries and Global Alpha (CHF) actively managed certificates (AMC). These investment vehicles, currently diversified across more than 40 high-conviction positions each, are engineered precisely to capture structural shifts across a spectrum of transformative themes such as the mass-production gateway to space.
While NASA remains trapped in a political procurement machine - evidenced by recent budget friction and delays pushing manned missions to at least February 2026 - the private sector has established a sustained and accelerating operational rhythm.
Commercial entities are not just supporting the state, they are outpacing it, transforming artisanal aerospace into a vertically integrated, rapid-response delivery system.
Nowhere is this shift more consequential than in national defense, where audacious vision of President Reagan’s "Star Wars" has been resurrected and modernized. Where the 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative envisioned a monolithic fortress in the sky, modern deterrence is built on a distributed 'mesh' of orbital sentinels - replacing the vulnerability of single assets with the security of thousands.
Rocket Lab (RKLB) has capitalized on this pivot, evolving from a niche launcher into a defense prime with a recent $816 million contract from the Space Development Agency. They are no longer just a launch service provider - having executed a record 21 successful launches in 2025 with a 100% mission success rate - they are contributing to the 'golden dome' of missile warning infrastructure prioritized by the Trump administration. Yet, the same industrial platform driving this defense boom is also powering a commercial revolution, turning orbit into a real-time operating system for the terrestrial economy.
For instance, Planet Labs (PL) has turned Earth observation into a scalable data utility, evidenced by a backlog that surged 216.0% last quarter to $734.0 million. This growth is driven by customers who are increasingly bypassing raw imagery, opting instead for AI-processed insights that deliver daily, automated analytics of activity around the globe.
To date, Planet Labs has launched nearly 700 satellites and currently operates three distinct constellations, while preparing its ‘Owl’ constellation, designed to deliver 1-meter resolution imaging with near-daily revisit rates. Notably, by integrating Nvidia AI processors directly on-orbit, these satellites perform high-end computing in the vacuum of space, processing raw data before downlink to dramatically reduce the latency between observation and action for the end user.
Simultaneously, AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) is pushing telecom into space, extending 4G and 5G connectivity directly to standard smartphones and shrinking coverage gaps that terrestrial towers will never reach. While privately-held Starlinkrelies on constellation density to serve the masses, AST SpaceMobile is capturing the premium high-bandwidth niche, following the successful deployment of its BlueBird 6 satellite in December 2025 - which delivers broadband speeds up to 120.0 Mbps to unmodified smartphones - the company is proving that the next cell tower will not be on a hill, but 400 miles (640km) overhead.
Even Europe, long paralyzed by a doctrine of "sovereignty at any cost," is forced to adapt to this new velocity. While the continent awaits the critical flight of the heavy-lift Ariane 64 in February 2026 to stabilize its independent access to space, the European Space Agency is finally rewriting its playbook. By committing over €900 million to a new competitive funding program for private launchers, Europe is acknowledging that to survive in a SpaceX world, it must stop relying on centralized planning and start acting like a commercial client.
In conclusion, the era of the state monopoly is over, giving rise to a true space industrial base: one that has effectively uncapped the ceiling on the global economy. But this is not a sector-wide rally, it is a concentration of value among a narrow cohort of survivors. The bankruptcies of Virgin Orbit (2023) and the collapse of Astra Space (2024) into a forced take-private deal serve as cautionary tales: capital inflated the sector faster than fundamentals could justify.
Our investment approach is designed to separate winners from pretenders - favoring companies with recurring government contracts, proven launch cadence, and margin expansion over those still burning cash to prove a concept.
Whether you are looking to scale your exposure to these structural shifts or are just beginning this journey, we invite you to explore how our Great Visionaries and Global Alpha (CHF) certificates can strengthen your long-term strategy.
If you would like to arrange a dedicated call or meeting to review these opportunities, please reach out at any time. We look forward to discussing the sector's potential and how our other convictions align with your investment goals.
Best regards,
Wilhelm Sissener, CFA
+41 (0)79 447 57 48
www.starvestcapital.com
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