Citus Space was born from a company called Craig Technologies Aerospace Solutions.

In 2021, it rebranded and was taken public in a traditional IPO, notable since most space companies at the time were merging with specs.

Citus is a space and defense tech company, offering everything from satellite and component manufacturing

to space-based data platforms to AI services. But founder and CEO Carol Craig says CITES flew largely

below the radar. One of the negatives of going IPO and with the investment bankers that we

used was that we didn't necessarily have this big following of analysts.

And that's that we saw that over the last four years where maybe we were the best kept secret that didn't want to be kept.

And so recently, I think because of what's happening with the defense, with the budgets, with the administration,

I think all of a sudden we're on everyone's

radar and they're recognizing that there's value in this small company. We did things different

in that we've been initially self-funded and then with the shareholders, we built our products

ourselves, not on the backs of some government contracts or things like that. It was really

investment. So we own the IP.

These are our products. This is our satellite constellation. The shareholders own these products.

Investors have certainly taken notice. As recently as early December, Citus was a penny stock.

Since then, it has surged more than 400 percent, with the market valuation now in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So still very small, but a market change for the defense

contractor. Why? Well, Citus was one of the contract awardees for the missile defense agency's

shield program. It's part of the broader Golden Dome strategy for Homeland Missile Defense.

The shield indefinite delivery and definite quantity contract sealing $151 billion.

On this episode, Carol Craig on Golden Dome, tech and policy disruption in space and defense,

and what comes next for a site of space? I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space.

So we are a smartly, vertically integrated technology and defense company, and we provide,

...