# Starpath is filling supply gaps for AI satellites

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/starpath-is-filling-supply-gaps-for-ai-satellites/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Saurav Shroff](https://realalpha.app/people/saurav-shroff/) · Saurav Shroff is founder and CEO of Starpath.
- Host: [Ti Morse](https://realalpha.app/people/ti-morse/) · Host, Relentless · Interviews hard-tech founders on Relentless; guests include Sam Altman, Brian Armstrong and Hadrian's Chris Power.
- Show: Relentless
- Episode: [SpaceX has no competition — Saurav Shroff, Starpath](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/), Oct 28, 2026
- Moment: 39:55 to 45:29 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/starpath-is-filling-supply-gaps-for-ai-satellites/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2395

## Quote

> “And if you approach a satellite components vendor and say, hey, I want to buy **100,000 thrusters**, I'll give you 100 million up front”
> — [Saurav Shroff](https://realalpha.app/people/saurav-shroff/) at [43:14](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2594) · Relentless

## Takeaways

1. Vendors may not support 100,000 thrusters even with $100 million upfront.
2. Shroff sees similar supply constraints across satellite bus components.
3. Starpath's expansion aims to keep customer constellation plans feasible.

## About this segment

Saurav Shroff says satellite vendors cannot offer components at the cost and scale AI constellations require. Starpath plans to make more of the satellite bus so customers can complete their systems.

From “SpaceX has no competition — Saurav Shroff, Starpath”, Oct 28, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[40:00](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2400) other half of the factory producing components yeah for like ai data center stats yeah um why are you even doing that in the first place instead of just focusing like really focusing on this one objective um yeah so um first of all i should just clarify one thing quickly which is that we are focused on bringing up production of and shipping to customers the best space solar panel ever made because they've placed orders they've given us down payments we've given them a schedule and we need to uphold to the promises we make to anybody, especially our customers, especially.

[40:36](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2436) So we are focused. You are right that roughly half the factory will be for production of solar modules and the other half will be for the scale production of other products, most of which, all of which actually have not been publicly released. But I'll give you my rationale for building them. So first of all, a data sat or really a satellite bus of any kind has about, I mean, you can slice it up in various ways, but it has about 10 major components. Solar panel, I won't list all of them.

[41:08](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2468) So solar panel, it has an attitude system that points the satellite, has a thruster that propels the satellite and allows it to change its orbital altitude or inclination slightly, and a few other things. And when we entered the solar business, the satellite solar business with starlight air um we quickly learned from our customers that it was pretty fucked up market right like they're very they're effectively no vendors there was no there were a lot of people doing sort of like half-ass not that good quality production in-house for their own relatively small volumes and there were no great products on the market as defined by the things that we talked about made products great made it made us make the things we talked about make a solar panel great for space. Low-cost manufacturer, lightweight, aka low-cost launch. So we learned that pretty

[41:57](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2517) quickly. And just through simple curiosity, we also learned that the situation for most of the other things that make a satellite bus, and especially in the case of an AI data set, were in an equally not good position. In other words, if you wanted to make an AI data set, and you needed, you know, 100,000 thrusters, and you needed them to cost, you know, we said the data set should be $800,000, you want the thruster to cost, you know, 50,000, 80,000. That's not a product you can buy. Okay, nobody will sell it to you. And it's not just like that nobody will sell it to you today, which is sort of obvious, like, okay, it's a very cheap satellite. Okay, obviously, nobody's going to sell you, you know, parts to make a dirt cheap satellite today. But it's also the case that if you went to the vendors who were selling those components who are selling those

[42:51](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2571) components um and you asked them hey i want to buy a hundred thousand and i want to put money down today what unit economics what unit economics can you achieve they're like not even up to up to the challenge like you could argue like the dev cost for a satellite is in the hundreds of millions of dollars for the first time you make it and this is like a well-supported fact by the fact that like you know starlink v1 costs around that much and so all these satellite startups that spend a few hundreds of millions of dollars building satellite. And if you approach a satellite components vendor and say, hey, I want to buy 100,000 thrusters, I'll give you 100 million up front, which is certainly enough money to develop a great thruster. They're not even up for the challenge. And by up for the challenge, I mean are willing to sell components, in this

[43:39](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2619) case thrusters, but this applies to all the components at a price that actually works for data side like idiot index is just retarded yeah the idiot index is off the charts um in the case of space solar i've seen idiot indices in the hundreds which idiot index is like the ratio between the cost of the materials and the cost of the finished good The idiot index on this product here is, you know, like six at our highest volume price.

[44:08](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2648) So if you buy a huge volume from us, we will sell it to you for six times the cost of materials. And that doesn't mean it's a six times markup. That means it's the materials cost us, you know, let's just say a dollar. They don't, but it's a dollar. And then, you know, process and rent and labor costs like a couple more bucks or three or four more bucks. And we'll sell it to you for six. um that's like an unheard of factor in the space industry just like this doesn't doesn't happen so why do we decide and you know another products that we're going to be building here i know you've seen some but none of them are public um but the the basic gist is there are about 10 components that make up a data set and we are making more than and right now we make one of them very well extremely well um the best in the world we will be making more of them too um and the reason why

[44:56](https://realalpha.app/v/QEACSjIYPrg/?t=2696) is because we want our customers to be successful and so if we're selling our customers you know if we have a if we have a eight billion dollar contract with our customers to deliver them a huge quantity of solar for a data set constellation but they can't be successful in making that data set constellation because there's nobody who can supply them with stuff that they need um we want them to be successful and we don't want them to go out of business or drop the contract because they can't do it so it's as simple as like it's the same conversation