Relativity Space is a C. M. C. Disruptor 50 company, touting an investor list that includes

Black Rock, Bailey Gifford, and Fidelity. The space startup is led by Tim Ellis, a Blue Origin alum who founded relativity on the premise of 3D printing rockets.

We're building a reusable rocket, which is really an alternative to what SpaceX is built with Falcon 9 and now a

Starship. So they have continued to be very successful with Starlink, which is

their own satellite network, but the commercial launch industry needs there to be another quickly moving disruptive player and launch to launch Amazon other companies that are building satellite network.

So relativity is the largest company that is working to be that second great American launch

provider.

After launching its smaller Terran 1 to space for the first time last year, Relativity pivoted to developing the more powerful

Terran R. Ellis says the medium to heavy lift rocket is still on pace to fly for the

first time in 2026 and that the company has doubled its backlog in a year to more than $2 billion.

But investors have been enticed not just by the launch business.

Relativity has pioneered 3D printing technologies that could be applied to manufacturing

across aerospace and other industries. It's the reason the US government has

awarded tens of millions of dollars to the startup to implement software and data science into large scale metal 3D printing.

This investment from the US government is helping us further that technology in a way that already

supports the core business.

But it is very clear to us that with 3D printing

at this application layer, we're building

into products that can be leveraged across other industries.

And so this is just a very small toe in the water to that.

I think it's going to grow significantly larger over time.

But right now, we're just focusing on helping the US government prove that this technology does work in other industries. On this episode Ellis shares updates on Relativity's new rocket and goes into detail regarding the intersection of generative AI and 3D printing.

...