Tom Mueller
Founder and CEO of Impulse Space, which develops in-space mobility vehicles and propulsion systems. Previously a founding member and CTO of Propulsion at SpaceX, where he led propulsion development for Falcon launch vehicles and Dragon spacecraft.
Impulse’s Series D Reaches $808 Million for Spacecraft Development
Impulse Space has raised a $308 million Series D extension to develop spacecraft that maneuver payloads after launch, bringing the round’s total to $808 million. Founder and chief executive Tom Mueller says the company is building demand across commercial, NASA and government customers for its Mira and Helios systems, while its near-term flight schedule is increasingly weighted toward government work.
Startups Build the Missing Logistics Layers for Orbit and Construction Sites
Impulse Space and Dusty Robotics are making the same kind of bet in very different markets: that valuable infrastructure sits in the handoff after the headline platform has done its job. Tom Mueller argues Impulse is building the logistics layer after launch, with Mira serving government demand for orbital mobility and Helios aimed at faster, cheaper moves from low Earth orbit to GEO, while lunar and Mars payload gains sit inside his broader case for in-space transport. Tessa Lau argues Dusty is doing the analogous work in construction, turning digital plans into precise floor-printed instructions for trades, data center builders and eventually other job-site robots.
Public-Market Capital Is Becoming an AI Infrastructure Advantage
TBPN’s John Coogan and Jordi Hays use Alphabet’s reported $80bn equity raise, Berkshire Hathaway’s investment and a run of founder interviews to argue that AI is pushing capital markets and operating infrastructure back to the center of technology strategy. Their case is that the advantage is moving to companies that can finance enormous compute buildouts, unify fragmented data, own service businesses where AI can be deployed, and build the physical systems — from data centers to space logistics — that make AI useful.
Impulse Space Raises $500 Million to Scale In-Space Transportation
Impulse Space founder and CEO Tom Mueller told Bloomberg that the next phase of the space economy will depend less on launch itself than on what happens after payloads reach orbit. Fresh off a $500mn raise and a $4.26bn valuation, Mueller argued that Impulse’s in-space transportation vehicles are meant to “take over where launch leaves off,” moving satellites to higher-energy orbits and eventually supporting missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.
AI Demand Is Rewriting Tech Financing From Hyperscalers to IPOs
Bloomberg Technology’s June 2 discussion framed Alphabet’s planned $80 billion equity raise and Anthropic’s confidential IPO filing as signs that AI demand is moving from product strategy into capital structure. The central argument was that the scale of AI infrastructure spending is forcing technology companies to rethink balance sheets, IPO timing, bank fees and supply-chain risk, with SpaceX’s listing plans and memory-chip constraints showing how the pressure is spreading beyond the hyperscalers.