Innovative business challenges question of which country owns cosmic space

A British company is developing a space-based “factory” to produce materials for quantum computers, AI data centers and defense infrastructure.

Space Forge, located in Cardiff, Wales, has reached a key milestone on its way to creating ultra-high-quality crystal “seeds” in space for the manufacture of semiconductors back on Earth, where they could be used in communications infrastructure, computing, and transport, as CNN highlights in an article.

In June 2025, it launched a microwave-sized factory satellite called ForgeStar-1 into orbit on a SpaceX rocket, and was able to generate plasma — gas heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius  — which would allow the production of advanced crystals in the future.

“Space offers an unparalleled industrial base compared to Earth,” says Space Forge CEO and co-founder Joshua Western.

When semiconductor materials are manufactured under conditions of microgravity the atoms they consist of are arranged more regularly, Western explains.

He adds that the vacuum of space reduces the likelihood of contamination, allowing for the production of “semiconductor crystals that are hundreds, if not thousands, of times higher in purity compared to those that can be produced on the ground.”

The combination of a more-ordered atomic structure and fewer impurities enables “huge gains” in the efficiency of the semiconductor the crystals are used to make, he explains.

The company is looking to sell its materials to businesses that require semiconductors capable of operating at very high powers.

“Our core markets right now are aerospace and defense and telecommunications and data,” says Western.

But back on Earth, there are obstacles for Space Forge.

“Regulation, by far, has been the biggest challenge,” says Western. “We’re a business that’s trying to do something that doesn’t yet exist.”

He says that while ForgeStar-1 was built in just seven weeks, obtaining the license to launch it took two and a half years.

And because no country has sovereignty in space, it is uncertain how the materials are to be taxed when returned to Earth, says Western.

“What was produced wasn’t made in the country it landed in. But neither was it made in any other country.”

While the company plans to manufacture ultra-high-quality versions of materials that already exist on Earth, Western says those could command prices in the low tens of millions of dollars per kilogram. However, he argues that producing materials in orbit “enables hundreds of new material combinations” that until now have existed only in theory — and that these could be worth “in the higher tens of millions.”

As cited in the article, market analysis by Deloitte estimates that the global semiconductor market grew by 22% in 2025 and is expected to be a $1 trillion industry by 2027, largely driven by the boom in AI infrastructure.

By Nazrin Sadigova