Joe Lonsdale
@joe_lonsdale·85.5K subscribers·787 videos
From Palantir to Space Defense: Building a $100 Billion Company
Posted
August 13, 2025
Views
15,025
Likes
476
Comments
30
Engagement
3.37%
August 13, 2025
15,025
476
30
3.37%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
46:21Now PlayingReusable rockets, new economics, and surging investment are quickly making space one of the most promising areas for growth and innovation. Like other areas of defense, we're in a transition from billion-dollar, exquisite satellites to the proliferation of attritable platforms. What are the new markets and opportunities this creates? How will the Golden Dome impact the space race and competition with China? And what exciting possibilities, like asteroid mining, are in our future?
This week we talk all things space with Ian Cinnamon, co-founder and CEO of Apex Space, a satellite platform company. A graduate of MIT and Stanford Business School, Ian first launched a startup incubator, Superlabs, with Mark Pincus before founding Synapse, a computer vision company later acquired by Palantir. There, Ian worked on key initiatives like Project Maven before leaving to build Apex, and bring speed and efficiency to satellite platform manufacturing.
We begin with Ian's entrepreneurial journey and how his research at MIT informed the creation of Synapse. A top talent at Palantir, he reveals what it was like working on Project Maven — and the protesters that inspired him — plus the "light bulb moment" that led him to launch Apex. Next, we dive into the space boom and how SpaceX upended the entire way we think about, and build, for space. Learn about the unique challenges of engineering for space, why Apex is moving toward full vertical integration, and how it plans to meet skyrocketing demand for more launches. We also discuss President Trump's ambitious Golden Dome project, new possibilities for space-based interceptors, and China's plans to overtake U.S. supremacy in space. Finally, we conclude with Ian's most exciting innovations beyond Earth, and why asteroid mining isn't as far-fetched as you might think.
Joe Lonsdale is an American entrepreneur, investor & philanthropist. He has been a part of founding more than a dozen mission-driven companies, including Palantir, Addepar, OpenGov, Affinity, Epirus, Resilience Bio, and 8VC.
Follow Joe on Twitter
You can find his writings here
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
