Elon Musk’s interview with CBS Sunday Morning seemed to get off to an awkward start, as reporter David Pogue asked the SpaceX CEO about his thoughts on his ally Donald Trump’s policies, including growing restrictions on international students.
“I think we want to stick to the subject of the day, which is, like, spaceships, as opposed to, you know, presidential policy,” Musk said.
Pogue looked surprised, replying, “Oh, okay, I was told, ‘Anything’s good.’”
“No,” Musk said, while looking into the distance. “Well … no.”
He did, however, comment on the controversy around his Department of Government Efficiency, which has been making aggressive cuts across federal agencies, and which Musk complained had become “the whipping boy for everything.”
“If there was some cut, real or imagined, everyone would blame DOGE,” he said.
Musk also suggested that he’s “a little stuck in a bind” when it comes to the Trump administration, where “I don’t want to speak out against the administration, but I also don’t want to take responsibility for everything the administration’s doing.”
Pogue’s interview was conducted before SpaceX’s Starship test flight on Tuesday, which saw the ship successfully launch but lose control on reentry. Asked whether there’s anything linking his various companies — in addition to SpaceX, there’s Tesla (which faces ongoing anti-Musk protests), xAI and X (formerly Twitter), Neuralink, and The Boring Company — Musk replied, “I guess you could think of the businesses as things that improve the probable trajectory of civilization.”
At the time, Musk was supposedly pulling back from his government work but said he would remain involved for a “day or two” per week. He told Pogue, “DOGE is going to continue, just as a way of life. And I will have some participation in that, but as I’ve said publicly, my focus has to be on the companies at this point.”
Pogue noted that after their conversation, an interview clip of Musk’s comments criticizing the Trump-backed budget bill drove a news cycle of their own — and soon after, Musk said he was ending his time as a special government employee. Trump, however, subsequently said Musk is “not really leaving.”
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From AI to EVs, demand for semiconductors is exploding, but silicon is hitting its limits. Making more efficient chips requires new materials, ones far less ubiquitous than sand, but the solution might be out there — literally.
Space Forge, a U.K. startup headquartered in Cardiff, Wales, recently raised a £22.6 million (approximately $30 million) Series A to make wafer materials in space, where unique conditions unlock new possibilities.
For instance, the Welsh startup earlier won funding for a project through which BT (formerly British Telecom) is hoping to test how integrating crystal materials grown in space could reduce the power consumption of its 5G towers. Because of weightlessness and other properties, crystals made in space have fewer defects, which can help devices use less energy.
Real-world use cases like this help Space Forge convey the message that critical systems could use its technology as an invisible backbone. The whole idea of making chips in orbit may sound like science fiction, but its feasibility has been known since the 1970s, CEO Joshua Western told TechCrunch.
“We’re stood on the shoulders of about 50 years of research when it comes to not only knowing that this is possible, but also knowing that there is a profound improvement in doing so,” Western said.
The improvement in question is obtaining crystals and advanced semiconductor materials with fewer defects and enhanced performance, making them appealing for use in applications such as quantum computing and defense systems.
This dual-use potential explains why NATO Innovation Fund led Space Forge’s Series A, and why major U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman is one of its partners.
Partners will be key to Space Forge’s trajectory: The company won’t build rockets and is instead relying on existing space providers for the launch part — a “solved problem,” in Western’s words.
It’s not just the rockets; from chip manufacturing to space return, Space Forge is tying together technologies that may be described as solved problems, at least on paper. But if you ask Western about its moat, he has a quick retort: “How bloody hard is it to do?!”
That’s the price to pay to take advantage of space’s unique environment: It requires adapting to harsh conditions such as extreme temperatures and microgravity, Western said. “Physics has the answers, and engineering is how you actually get there.”
Engineering is also needed to bridge the gap between innovation and commercially viable technology. Rather than capsules like Apollo’s, Space Forge returns its materials to Earth as “Mary Poppins from space.” Western explained the nickname: “We deploy something that looks very much like an umbrella, [but] that’s space grade, and that allows us to float back from space down to the ground.”
Developing new return technology is a key focus of Space Forge. Besides its heat shield, Pridwen, a nod to the legend of King Arthur, the startup also developed Fielder, a floating net to catch returning satellites and ensure a soft landing on water. These efforts were supported by the U.K. Space Agency and European Space Agency, of which the U.K. is still a member despite Brexit.
Establishing a return infrastructure across Europe is one of Space Forge’s ambitions — and it is underway. This week, the company opened an office in Portugal on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores, a well-suited location for satellite return in mainland Europe and an important step to convince European partners that this approach can reach industrial scale.
The increasing commoditization of both return and launch technologies is what made the rise of in-space manufacturing startups possible in the first place, with applications also including drug discovery and telecom hardware. But their viability is still very dependent on costs coming down, or in finding clients willing to pay that premium.
Shifting geopolitics could help Space Forge secure more of these clients. Western and his co-founder and CTO Andrew Bacon previously worked at Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales and its Italian peer Leonardo. But the trend is broader than just defense, as concerns mount across Europe over reliance on semiconductors from Taiwan.
“We urgently need a resilient, homegrown supply of the next-gen supermaterials required for the future of compute. We also need this homegrown chip supply to be produced sustainably,” World Fund general partner Daria Saharova wrote in a statement.
The climate tech VC firm, which co-led Space Forge’s seed round and participated in its Series A, is buying into Space Forge’s positioning as a “carbon negative technology” that could fight climate change. However, the emissions savings have yet to be proven at scale and rely on commercial adoption to truly offset each mission.
Space Forge, though, still has to complete its first mission. Its first attempt ended after a grand total of six and a half minutes when Virgin Orbit’s rocket suffered an anomaly in its launch of Cornwall in 2023, losing its entire payload, including Space Forge’s ForgeStar-0 satellite.
With its new funding, the company is now accelerating the development of its latest spacecraft and readying for the launch of its ForgeStar-1 demonstrator later this year, together with Pridwen. And in a nod to the galaxy far, far away, Space Forge announced the mission’s official name — “The Forge Awakens” — on May 4.
Anna Heim met and interviewed Joshua Western and Daria Saharova at a World Fund event that the VC firm covered her travel costs to attend; this article was written independently.
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We’re thrilled by the overwhelming response to our call for speakers at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, taking place October 27–29 at Moscone West in San Francisco.
After a careful selection process, we’ve narrowed it down to 20 impressive finalists—10 breakout sessions and 10 roundtables.
Now it’s your turn to help shape the agenda. Audience Choice voting is open until 11:59 p.m. PT tonight. This is your final opportunity to weigh in—vote for your favorite sessions and help decide which will take the stage. You can vote for as many sessions as you’d like—just one vote per session.
The top 5 in each category will join the official Disrupt 2025 lineup.
Breakout Sessions
How to Get Acquired in Tech (Without Selling Out): M&A Tips for Founders and Builders
Aklil Ibssa, Head of Corporate Development and M&A, Coinbase
Agentic AI for Startups: Automate, Adapt, and Accelerate Growth
Anmol Rastogi, Head of Product, Amazon Business – AI & ML, Amazon
Automation with Agents: From Work Enablement to Work Completion
Chet Kapoor, Chairman and CEO, DataStax
AI at the Brink: Strategic Playbook for National Security
Dan Hendrycks, Executive and Research Director, Center for AI Safety (CAIS)
Leading a Series A Round in 2025 and Sustaining Momentum
Gabriel Kra, Managing Director, Prelude Ventures
The Agentic Apocalypse: Securing the Enterprise in the Age of 1 Billion AI Agents
Jack Hidary, CEO, SandboxAQ
Jim Breyer, Founder and CEO, Breyer Capital
Embracing AI for a Better Digital Future
Matt Madrigal, Chief Technology Officer, Pinterest
Mining for Millions with GenAI’s 4 Ds: Striking Trust, Delight, and Dividends
Michael Stewart, Managing Partner, M12
From Data to Agents: Building the AI-Native Enterprise
Sridhar Ramaswamy, Chief Executive Officer, Snowflake
From Vibes to Velocity: How AI Tools Can Help You Achieve Your Development Goals
Tim Rogers, Staff Product Manager, GitHub Copilot, GitHub
Roundtable Sessions
Future of Space Economy in the Low Earth Orbit
Abhijeet Kumar, Invited Lecturer – New Space Economy, UC Berkeley | Tech and Strategy Lead, Archer
From Startup to Scale-Up: A GTM Blueprint
Anjai Lal, Head of Strategy and Enablement, Google Cloud
From Code to Capital: How VCs Spot the Next AI Powerhouses
Avi Bharadwaj, Investment Director, Intel Capital
The Winning Formula: Turning Your Business Into a Trusted, Scalable Community To Drive Growth
Justine Palefsky and Tasneem Amina, Co-founders, Kindred
Vlad Loktev, Partner, Index Ventures
How to Train Your Model: Taming AI Agents Without Breaking Them
Kyla Guru, Head of Model Cyber Policy, Anthropic
Alex Moix, Investigations Lead, Safeguards, Anthropic
Going a Layer Deeper: Why the future of AI investments lies with infrastructure and applications
Paul Drews, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures
Scaling Search and AI for Millions: Lessons from Reddit Search
Rachel Miller, Product Manager, Reddit
AI Evaluation 101: Addressing Challenges to Real-World AI Applications
Rohit Patel, Director, Generative AI, Meta
From Workarounds to Breakthroughs: How UpLink Lets Users Connect Any App—No Integration Needed
Scott Weinert, CTO and Co-founder, Atomic
Whose Company Is It, Anyway?: What You Lose When You Accept Outside Capital
Sridhar Vembu, Chief Scientist, Zoho
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