Space technology investment is surging into 2026. Confidence is high. The ten largest funding rounds total over $3.7 billion. And it's only April.

Defence and national security contracts are driving much of the momentum, with companies like Stoke Space, Sierra Space and Cesium Astro attracting hundreds of millions on the strength of government partnerships.

Infrastructure remains the dominant investment thesis — from encrypted GPS alternatives and space-based weather platforms to satellite communications and reusable launch vehicles — reflecting a market that is still building the foundational layer needed for commercial space to scale.

The biggest surprise sits at the top of the list: Beijing-based iSpace China claimed the single largest raise at $729 million, confirming the US V China space race is very much happening.

Meanwhile, three companies have crossed the unicorn threshold — StarCloud, Tomorrow.io and Sierra Space, the latter commanding a confirmed $8 billion valuation.

Human spaceflight and space station ambition round out the upper tier, with Vast Space and Axiom Space collectively raising $850 million to build the commercial space stations and crew infrastructure that will replace the ISS when it retires later this decade.

The Top 10 In Full

iSpace China — $729M

Sierra Space — $550M (Series C)

Vast Space — $500M (Series A)

Cesium Astro — $470M

Axiom Space — $350M

Stoke Space — $350M

PLD Space — €210M (Series C)

Tomorrow.io — $175M

Xona Space — $170M (Series C)

StarCloud — $170M

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Chapters

(00:00) Starcloud

(00:52) Xona Space

(03:27) Tomorrow IO

(06:01) PLD Space

(08:00) Stoke Space

(10:18) Axiom Space

(12:29) Cesium Astro

(14:50) VAST Space

(19:02) Sierra Space

(21:47) I-Space (Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Ltd.)

The Martens Clause, a legal principle drafted by Russian-Imperial diplomat Fyodor Martens during the first Hague Peace Conference of 1899, established that even in the absence of specific written law, nations and individuals remain bound by "the laws of humanity and the requirements of public conscience."

Originally conceived as a compromise to prevent the collapse of early international humanitarian law negotiations - when smaller nations like Belgium objected to how occupying powers classified resistance fighters - the clause became a foundational backstop in international law.

It was subsequently invoked in some of the most consequential legal proceedings of the twentieth century, including the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46 to counter arguments that prosecuting Nazi war crimes constituted retroactive legislation, the 1949 Corfu Channel case where Albania was held responsible for failing to warn shipping of mines in its territorial waters, and the 1986 ICJ ruling against the United States for mining Nicaraguan harbors and supporting the Contra insurgency.

Mark & Jeremy from Thinking On Paper are now asking whether this 127-year-old principle could serve as what some are calling a "minimum viable architecture" for governing emerging technologies — particularly artificial intelligence, commercial space operations, and quantum computing — where the pace of innovation vastly outstrips the speed of regulation.

Jeremy argues that the clause's core logic — that something not being explicitly prohibited does not make it automatically permitted — could provide a much-needed ethical and legal floor beneath industries currently operating in regulatory grey zones, from AI training on copyrighted data to autonomous weapons systems and asteroid mining rights.

Mark counters that the clause has historically only been applied retroactively to clear moral atrocities, and that its deliberately vague language, while effective at building diplomatic consensus, lacks the specificity needed to adjudicate the morally ambiguous questions at the frontier of technology, such as algorithmic bias, AI decision-making opacity, and the concentration of technical power among a small number of corporations and nation-states.

Please enjoy the show.

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To suggest guests or sponsor the show, please email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz

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(00:00) The First Peace Conference: A Historical Perspective

(07:37) The Martin's Clause: Implications for Modern Governance

(10:05) Space Tech and the Outer Space Treaty

(13:58) AI and the Need for Ethical Frameworks

(17:21) Accountability in Technology Deployment

(22:56) The Future of Humanity: Collaboration vs. Competition

Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum to every senior official at the Pentagon directing the Department of War to become an AI-first warfighting force. Six weeks later America was at war with Iran and AI was identifying targets. The memo outlines seven pace-setting projects — Swarm Forge, Agent Network, Ender's Foundry, and four more — and contains one sentence that defines the entire document: "We must accept that the risks of not moving fast enough outweigh the risks of imperfect alignment." Mark & Jeremy get into what every section actually means, why Anthropic was designated a national security supply chain risk for refusing to remove two guardrails, and the question the memo never answers: should a machine ever be allowed to pull the trigger?

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🎧 Listen to every podcast⁠

📺 Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠

🏠 Follow us on ⁠X⁠

🏠 Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠

To suggest guests or sponsor the show, please email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz

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Chapters

(00:00) Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War

(00:58) Executive Order 14179: America's AI Military Dominance

(01:59) China And AI Arms Race

(04:36) Anthropic & Eliminating Bureaucratic Barriers

(07:20) The 7 Pace Setting Projects (PSPs) In The Memo

(08:28) 100% LLM Kill Chain Capability

(10:22) Palmer Luckey

(11:53) Intelligence & The AI Open Arsenal

(13:57) The War Time Approach To Blockers

(16:46) AI Talent Acquisition At The DOW

(18:54) We must accept that the risks of not moving fast enough outweigh the risks of imperfect alignment