Space as Infrastructure: Defining a New Asset Class for Institutional Capital

The space economy is entering a new phase in which satellite constellations, launch systems, ground networks, and in-orbit services are evolving from mission-driven programs into persistent infrastructure platforms analogous to telecommunications, transportation, and energy systems. Yet while operational capabilities have rapidly matured, the financial frameworks required to scale space infrastructure have not kept pace.

A central challenge remains clear: institutional investors do not fund space infrastructure at scale because they cannot consistently model, price, and structure risk across increasingly complex orbital and operational environments. Limited visibility into utilization, performance, resiliency, and system-level dependencies has constrained long-duration capital formation and kept much of the sector dependent on venture funding despite growing commercial and government demand.

This session examines how that dynamic is beginning to change. Advances in operational data, system integration, artificial intelligence, and space situational awareness are improving transparency across the space value chain, making infrastructure performance more measurable and risk more quantifiable. At the same time, launch infrastructure is transitioning from low-frequency bespoke operations toward higher-cadence, operationally mature systems with characteristics increasingly comparable to traditional transportation infrastructure, logistics networks, and other large-scale industrial platforms.

Drawing on investment experience alongside doctoral research at the University of Oxford focused on how data reshapes complex systems and transforms how risk is understood, this session will provide a practical framework for identifying where infrastructure-style investment is becoming viable, what capital structures are emerging, and what policy and market conditions are required to unlock institutional scale.

Attendees will leave with actionable insight into how the next phase of the space economy will be financed, scaled, operationalized, and integrated into the broader global infrastructure landscape. The discussion will also address how public-private collaboration, infrastructure standardization, and operational transparency will influence which companies and platforms emerge as long-term winners in the space economy.