00:00This is such an interesting field. It's one that NVIDIA has looked at.
00:04The use of optics in GPU is also, or OPU is being looked at.
00:08Let's start with what you're offering, the actual technology itself, which we wrote about this morning.
00:13Yeah, thanks for having me on the show.
00:15And yeah, we just announced our company, Mesh Optical, coming out of stealth here.
00:21We are standing up high-volume optical manufacturing of these optical interconnects that are used for all GPU clusters.
00:28So anytime you hear someone talking about a GPU cluster, there's four to five of these optical transceivers for every
00:35one GPU.
00:36And so, yeah, we're excited to offer our first product as what we call a linear pluggable optic.
00:42And it's at like a 1.6 terabit per second data rate, which is like what the state-of-the
00:48-art will be in the coming years in all these GPU clusters.
00:52Trevor, you were at SpaceX for about five years.
00:54You're the laser guy, right, working on the technology stack that helps satellites communicate, essentially.
01:01Your co-founders, also SpaceX alumni, in slightly different domains.
01:05But how is that transferable to what you're doing here in the first instance with the transceivers?
01:13Yeah, great question.
01:14And, no, I was super excited to have a lot of the team that I worked with there deploying the
01:19Starlink laser mesh, and we're very proud of what we did there.
01:22And, you know, I think about the job here every day, and it feels very similar to what I was
01:30doing at SpaceX.
01:31And, you know, SpaceX, the space laser team was quite small and a very awesome team.
01:35And we're building the same thing here, a very small, like, technical-oriented team with really talented individuals.
01:41And the day-to-day feels very similar.
01:43We're, you know, building, standing up high-volume production, trying to deploy as much hardware as possible, and co-locating
01:52the talent right next to the manufacturing line.
01:55And so, yeah, it feels very similar.
01:58This is about more than the underlying technology, right?
02:02This is a field where the supply chain is dominated by China.
02:08And so one of your ambitions is to exceed that, bring capacity to the United States, and you've put a
02:14timeline of 2027 on that.
02:17This is a big sort of big debut funding round.
02:20But what's the roadmap from here?
02:21You're going to need more capital.
02:23What are your priorities?
02:25Yeah, our priority is to build as many optical interconnects as possible and deploy as many of those as we
02:32can.
02:33So for the immediate term, it's getting to high volume of this first device we're making, while at the same
02:40time planning for our long-term ambitions of doing space-based laser communication and eventually one day propelling spacecraft with
02:48photons.
02:50Right, right.
02:51So explain that distinction, right?
02:53In the first instance, who's the customer, data center on Earth?
02:57And then in the future, there is a distinction on this happening in space.
03:01Yeah, yeah.
03:02So first customer, you know, we've got to help the U.S. deploy this compute on the ground as fast
03:07as possible.
03:08And, you know, there's a big vulnerability in the supply chain with regards to optics and the way those optics
03:13are assembled and manufactured all overseas.
03:16And standing up a secure supply chain outside of, you know, Asia and China specifically really helps us leverage our
03:25product into all of these data centers on the ground.
03:27And when we show how much volume we can do on the ground, it's, you know, then we have to
03:32start pushing that volume to space and we'll be the one strategically set up to do that.
03:37So just real quick on Thrive Capital, a big day for them.
03:41They're leading you around.
03:43Why is it important that they are backing you?
03:46Yeah, they, from the beginning, have just been ready to go with us and deploy quickly.
03:53And, you know, our goal is to stand up this volume production as fast as possible.
03:58And they're, they were also willing to work as fast as possible with us.
04:01And we really appreciate them, like, backing the founder and also wanting to accelerate.
04:07From the time that you were at SpaceX, clearly, like, the bigger vision has changed.
04:11Right now, space-based data center, like, that's what we're going towards.
04:15Do you expect to work with your old company and with Elon Musk to try and pitch the technology back
04:21into them?
04:23You know, I'd always love to keep working with them and help.
04:27I just want to help connect as much compute and send probes to deep space as much as possible.
04:35And whoever we can work with on that, I'm very excited to do that.
04:38And, you know, connecting everything from the ground to space, it's going to need to transition to optical
04:44because RF reaches a limit and optical photons are much more efficient and power efficient.
04:51And the things, the constraints on the ground are power and the constraints in space are also power.
04:55And so it leads very well for what we're making here.
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