American DeepTech Calls for $100B Space Project Initiative
Decades after humans first stood on the lunar surface, America is getting ready to take its next step: building permanent structures on the moon.
As the Artemis II astronauts prepare to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean after their record setting flight around the dark side of the moon, American DeepTech is issuing a call to action for the global financial community to move beyond venture equity and toward large-scale Space Project Finance.
While Artemis II represents a monumental leap in human exploration, American DeepTech asserts that the long-term sustainability of a lunar presence, including the recently announced $20 billion Lunar Surface Base, will depend on infrastructure financing models rather than government appropriations or traditional venture capital alone.
NASA and the Trump administration’s recent decision NASA to “pause” the Lunar Gateway in favor of accelerated lunar surface operations has created a critical need for permanent power, communications, and life-support infrastructure on the Moon.
American DeepTech, an infrastructure and venture investment firm led by former National Science Foundation Program Director Dr. Anna Brady-Estevez, is positioning its infrastructure fund to lead this transition.
“We are catalyzing early industrialization of the moon,” says Dr. Anna Brady-Estevez,” Founding Partner of American DeepTech, “The lunar focus has shifted from ‘getting there’ to ‘staying there’ and building out what we at American DeepTech have been calling ‘Moonfra’.”
While Artemis II represents a monumental leap in human exploration, American DeepTech asserts that long-term scalability of lunar presence, including Nasa’s plans to build a $20 billion moon base, would benefit from infrastructure financing models in addition to government appropriations, venture and growth capital.
Dr. Anna Brady-Estevez is former Co-Chair of the federal government’s US Space Economy Interagency Working Group and former National Science Foundation Space Portfolio Program Director. She says investing in moon infrastructure should be similar to how we invest in our homes and infrastructure on earth.
“On Earth, we buy houses and build infrastructure like power plants, roads and hospitals with 20% down payments and the rest financed. In space we are too often still forced to pay 100% cash up front, often from equity or government budgets,” said Brady-Estevez, “We are effectively trying to build a multi-trillion-dollar frontier without the equivalent of a space mortgage. To secure American leadership, we must move beyond the ‘1:1’ equity model. For instance, if we could lever up the $20 billion moon base budget with 80% leverage that could enable us to finance and build $100 billion worth of infrastructure-grade assets.”
Such expansion of leverage could potentially enable the continuation of other programs like the Lunar Gateway, a planned orbiting space station, which was put on hold in March.
“Our team’s prior work in terrestrial infrastructure such as liquified natural gas and power plants shows us project and infrastructure financing are critical to scaling “Moonfra”, which is currently undercapitalized versus earth infrastructure,” said Dr. Brady Estevez.
The space economy is expected to reach $1.8T by 2035 (World Economic Forum, McKinsey) and is expected to vastly improve life on our planet as well.
“The growing lunar economy has potential to fuel new breakthroughs in clean energy, AI, advanced materials, and life-saving medicine that would elevate the standard of living across every corner of the Earth,” Brady-Estevez added.
In the past two months alone, American DeepTech has made investments in a number of companies with potential to drive the cislunar economy.
American DeepTech’s team has decades of experience that builds on work at prior institutions where members previously led investments across space tech including: reusable rockets, artificial intelligence, satellite communications, position navigation and timing, asteroid mining, in-situ resource utilization, in-space manufacturing, in-space biotechnology, in-space semiconductors and advanced materials, habitats and platforms, moon infrastructure, gravitational and force modification, fusion, energy production, energy storage, radiation hardening, advanced communications, cybersecurity of space based assets, digital assets, space situational awareness, quantum, advanced physics and anomalous phenomena, and several other areas.
American DeepTech is now eager to bring together innovators to build out the future of the moon infrastructure or “Moonfra.”
Prospective “Moonfra” Opportunities:
Launches with less gravitational pull: launching from the moon requires a small fraction of the energy of launching from earth due to gravity being 1/6th of that experienced on earth. This lends to the moon serving as a critical launching point relative to earth for other points in space, including Mars, asteroids and beyond.
Artificial intelligence, moon mapping and remote sensing: artificial intelligence for lunar operations, digital twins development, mapping, remote sensing, analytics and prediction. In-space AI data centers.
In-situ resource production and utilization: the moon has fuels, water and more. There are many resources which are rare on earth, such as rare earth minerals that are relatively abundant in terms of their high concentration on certain areas of the moon.
Microgravity based manufacturing: utilization of 1/6th gravity, expected by many experts to have similar benefits to LEO based microgravity for manufacturing of advanced biotechnologies and advanced materials alike. A wide range of crystals and other materials are possible to create and assemble in microgravity and low gravity that are impeded on earth due to processes like sedimentation and other agglomeration.
Data centers and advanced compute: Off-planetary data resilience and back-up, high performance edge computing. Processing of lunar data. Data center cooling resources in permanently shadowed lunar craters and leveraging the lunar night.
Moon-based PNT, time, internet and comms: Position navigation and timing systems for the moon, establishment of lunar time standards, lunar internet and other communications networks.
Nuclear technology and SMRs: nuclear technologies suited to the lunar surface and providing ongoing baseload power at a much lower weight per mass launched from earth (vs. solar technologies).
Energy production and storage: a broad range of energy production and storage technologies well suited for the lunar environment and radiation hardened.
Radio frequency silence: potential for deep space sensing and physical shielding from portions of terrestrial electronic noise.
American DeepTech is a venture and infrastructure investment firm dedicated to scaling frontier technologies into foundational global assets. Bridging the gap between early-stage innovation and commercial infrastructure, the firm targets high-impact sectors including artificial intelligence, space technology, advanced energy, quantum and biotech. The American DeepTech leadership team brings decades of prior institutional experience, having previously backed and built companies from the ground up that have reached tens of billions of dollars in total valuation. Members of the team have also provided strategic guidance and advanced scientific leadership and to some of the world’s most complex and valuable infrastructure, including the International Space Station and enterprise platforms operating at the trillion-dollar market scale. Members of the team have also at prior institutions played key roles directing and leading with some of the nation’s largest and most active space portfolios at NASA.
Photo: Dr. Anna Brady-Estevez, American DeepTech Founder & Managing Partner
American DeepTech’s Space Leadership:
Dr. Anna Brady-Estevez, Founder and Managing Partner, has previously served as the Co-Chair (alongside NASA) of the United States Space Economy Interagency working group, and also led the commercial Space Portfolio at the National Science Foundation, following prior work in multi-billions in infrastructure strategy and investments, and early work on what became a $T+ transformation. Dr. Brady-Estevez was also a Co-Chair of US Space Disruptors Day 12/18/2024 where she spoke publicly to the importance of leverage and expansion of terrestrial financial tools, leverage and project finance to better enable build-out of the Space Economy. Prior to her government service, Dr. Brady-Estevez served as the Director of Corporate Strategy for The AES Corporation, where she was instrumental in over $6 billion of global infrastructure.
Dr. Donna Roberts, Chief Scientist, has previously served as the Deputy Chief Scientist for the International Space Station, a $150B+ in-space asset with the highest levels of research in microgravity to date.
Leonard Dudzinski, Chief Technology Officer, has previously served as the CTO of the NASA Planetary Systems Directorate ($3B+ annual budget), where he served in critical roles helping with the build out of NASA’s nuclear strategy as well as instrumentation and sensing relevant to the moon.
Dr. David Beck formerly served as US Space Force Branch Chief active in the build out of the US Air Force and Space Force’s deca-billion-dollar-plus annual industrial base.
Larry Forsley has been active in 50+ years of nuclear and fusion research and development, including lattice confinement fusion work for NASA.
By combining the agility of venture capital with the structural scale of infrastructure finance, American DeepTech is positioned for leadership in the industrialization of the Cislunar economy and the commercialization of declassified deep-tech breakthroughs.
The American DeepTech team is available for TV, print and podcast interviews.
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