Baiju Bhatt arrives at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 not as the fintech provocateur many remember, but as an entrepreneur pitching perhaps the biggest infrastructure bet of the century: harvesting sunlight in space and delivering it to Earth. At the Moscone West conference October 27–29, Bhatt will take the Space Stage to explain how Aetherflux, his U.S. aerospace company, plans to turn decades of academic concept into commercial reality and what that will mean for energy markets, national policy and planetary risk.

“The physics hasn’t changed — space is the cleanest place to harvest solar power — but the economics and the systems engineering have,” Bhatt said in a preview interview with TechCrunch. “What Aetherflux is building is a supply‑chain problem at planetary scale: large, repeatable satellites, wireless power systems that are safe and reliable, and a regulatory framework that lets us deliver continuous baseload energy.”

Space solar power (SSP) has long been both alluring and elusive. In theory, solar arrays above the atmosphere produce power 24/7 without weather interruptions; in practice, engineers must solve enormous challenges: launching very large structures affordably, converting electricity to microwave or laser beams and back on the ground, managing heat and reliability in space, and ensuring safety and legal compliance for energy beaming across national borders.

Bhatt’s pitch ties those technical obstacles to the playbook he used at Robinhood: scale through software, vertical integration and an aggressive fundraising cadence. Aetherflux’s approach, according to company filings and public statements, layers modular satellite platforms with automated assembly and an emphasis on reusable launch architecture. The company has drawn venture capital interest, executives say, though Bhatt declined to disclose current financing details ahead of Disrupt.

Investors will be scrutinizing technical milestones. “The next 18 months will tell us whether this is an engineering roadmap or an entrepreneurial wish list,” said an energy investor who asked not to be named. Independent researchers also caution that even with improved launch economics and photovoltaic efficiency, conversion losses, orbital debris risks and the need for new spectrum and safety regulations remain major constraints.

Those constraints intersect with geopolitics. Space solar projects implicate national security, spectrum allocation and the Outer Space Treaty’s principles on peaceful use. Several countries and national labs have active SSP research programs, and industry observers say clear U.S. policy will be essential if private firms like Aetherflux are to deploy at scale without triggering international tensions.

Bhatt has not been shy about those stakes. “If you want to move a sector that touches climate and energy security, you have to engage regulators early and honestly,” he said. His presence at Disrupt offers an early test of whether Silicon Valley’s rapid‑iteration ethos can adapt to the long timelines and heavy capital demands of space infrastructure.

TechCrunch Disrupt’s Space Stage has become a forum where startups, investors and policy thinkers collide. For Aetherflux, the event is as much about shaping narrative and securing partnerships as it is about technical exposition. For attendees, Bhatt’s transition from democratizing finance to chasing sunlight above Earth will be a litmus test: can the ambition that remade retail trading do the same for the global energy system, or will the physics and geopolitics of space prove a different kind of regulator?