Thai Aerospace Entrepreneur James Yenbamroong Bets Big With Spacetech Firm

Trained as an engineer, James Yenbamroong cut his teeth at defense giant Northrop Grumman before launching his own satellite company in Thailand. Mu Space is burning through capital to get his vision off the ground.

The largest private satellite research and assembly center in Southeast Asia can be found on a busy frontage road parallel to Bangkok’s six-lane Don Muang tollway, tucked between a tractor dealer and an empty lot. It’s early December 2021, and inside Factory 1, an ultramod 2,202-square-meter hanger, jeans-clad James Yenbamroong, founder and CEO of Thai aerospace manufacturing firm mu Space, takes to the stage to talk robotics, remote space machinery and power systems to the press and potential investors.

Projected on a screen behind him is the undeniable star of the show, artist’s renderings of the mu-B200 (pictured above)—Thailand’s first in-house-designed commercial satellite that the five-year-old company hopes to build and put into orbit by early 2023. It’s an ambitious, if not a little improbable, bet for the soft-spoken 38-year-old, who has raised millions of dollars from investors banking that his firm will do just that.

Its success could open a pipeline of orders for the customizable 200kg satellite for low-Earth orbit payloads (like Earth observation, disaster prevention and weather monitoring) that has a build time of 12 months and a $4 million price tag—about half that of its competitors, the firm says. At a minimum, mu Space’s ability to make parts on-site has the potential to bridge the gap with Western suppliers and create a spacetech supply chain in Southeast Asia.

A few months later at mu Space’s head office, flanked by models of rockets and astronauts, Yenbamroong extols his underdog advantage. “Companies are looking at alternatives to being dependent on China, especially now,” he says, noting current geopolitical strains between space powers America, China and Russia.

Additionally, pandemic-fueled supply chain disruptions have limited shipments from China, including batteries and sophisticated hardware demanded by the aerospace industry. “That definitely gives us an advantage, being here in Asia,” he says. “Also, everyone in this industry is looking for a reliable supplier that will protect their intellectual property.”

Within a few years, Yenbamroong expects that the privately funded company will send as many as 10 custom-designed satellites into space a year. 

Mu Space made its first splash in 2018 when it put a modest 8kg payload into space atop New Shepard, a new rocket from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The payload, with experiments from local universities, was the spaceflight firm’s first Thai client. A second Blue Origin launch followed, then a third at the end of 2019. A year later, mu Space expanded to a payload of computers and electronics to test how its data systems would operate in space as it got its spacetech production facilities up and running. It’s currently selling space on the mu-B200, with the launch date dependent on those commitments.

Projecting a satellite image on a computer screen and blasting a real one into space aren’t the same things. With investments in infrastructure, technology and manufacturing capability, mu Space is burning through capital. Yenbamroong expects to take in between $10 million and $20 million in revenue this year—thanks to contracts to design and test telecoms equipment as well as satellite-monitoring services—while expenditures are estimated at over $30 million. “We’ll probably not make a profit for five to ten years,” he says.

By then, if all goes according to plan, mu Space will have scaled up from its first generation of satellites. “This is just the start,” says Yenbamroong, who is also the startup’s chief technology officer. Within a few years, Yenbamroong expects that the privately funded company will send as many as 10 custom-designed satellites into space a year, and beyond that, mass produce hundreds satellites as well as its parts and power systems annually from one of his Bangkok factories (there are three currently). Like other, bigger, players in the private space industry, such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, he shares a loftier goal of space tourism and moon settlements.

Among his earliest childhood memories are attending air shows with his father, Vilas Yenbamroong, a Thai general who took his only son to military exhibitions. “I always wanted to be a pilot,” says James, who grew up with drawings of planes and rockets on his bedroom walls.

He attended high school in New Zealand, then moved to the U.S. to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he got a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and then a master’s in mechanical engineering. Plans for pilot training gave way to an engineer’s job working on unmanned vehicle systems at defense giant Northrop Grumman in California.

Home beckoned, so in 2014 Yenbamroong returned to Thailand. He then went into business with his uncle Chatchai Yenbamroong to set up telecoms and satellite operator Mobile LTE (now Thaisat Global). The family is well known in Thailand’s powerful telecoms industry.

Chatchai, a one-time journalist and Fulbright scholar, helped steer former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra into telecoms, although they later parted ways and became competitors.

James led the company to becoming the country’s second licensed satellite operator, then saw an opportunity to launch mu Space in 2017 with five million baht ($150,000) of his own money, and another 100 million baht in funding from angel investor Prasop Jirawatwong, owner and CEO of Bangkok-based apparel maker Nice Apparel. Other early investors included infrastructure giant B.Grimm Power and Singapore venture capital firm Majuven. Mu Space quickly applied for—and got—a 15-year government license to operate and provide satellite services to Thailand.

A $25 million series B round followed in 2019 and a year later, a $2.7 million investment from state-owned telecoms TOT after the two firms partnered to explore the tech for low Earth orbit satellites. He expects to raise $34 million in new series C funding, due to close in the fourth quarter, that would bump up mu Space’s valuation to $330 million.

Numerous startups have emerged in a booming space field awash with venture capital, but so far little of that money has found its way to Southeast Asia, says Gregg Daffner, president of Asia-Pacific Satellite Communications Council and cofounder of satellite leasing firm GapSat. Overall, global funding to commercialize space doubled in 2021 to about $15 billion from a year earlier, according to U.S. analytics firm BryceTech.

Much of that will be directed to launch an estimated 1,700 satellites annually on average through 2030, according to space intelligence firm Euroconsult. The majority are deployed by Western firms that have dominated space exploration for decades.

Yet costs of entry have come down and a proliferation of new launch firms has helped to democratize the field, says Daffner. Mu Space is the only visible player in Thailand, he adds, and has the advantage among Southeast Asia’s space startups.

“It’s an exciting time for space, and to think, you could potentially build satellites in Thailand,” Daffner says. “This is a big deal.” But he sounds a note of caution about ambitions to launch. “An entrepreneur might be willing to take a big risk,” he adds, but “the industry [will] not buy a satellite from a manufacturer with nil heritage.”

Asia has long had the space bug. India blasted off its first rocket in the 1960s, and started sending satellites into space over 40 years ago. China became the third nation to land astronauts on the moon, and has an estimated 500 satellites in orbit. Japan was the first country to land on, and harvest material from, an asteroid. South Korea launched a small satellite in June atop its first homegrown rocket.

Mu Space made its first splash in 2018 when it put a modest 8kg payload into space atop New Shepard, a new rocket from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Southeast Asia has mostly remained an onlooker. Thailand is backing a space consortium to develop a pilot satellite to survey the earth next year. Indonesia formed space agency Lapan almost 60 years ago, reviving dormant ambitions recently with plans to build the region’s first launch site on Biak Island. Singapore is doing its best to carve out a role in the intelligence area, while providing funding to universities to spur development and incubate space startups.

Ng Zhen Ning, cofounder and CEO of Nu-Space—a Singapore startup that makes tiny satellites—received a year’s worth of government support that was crucial to launching its first nanosatellite on SpaceX in January. Still, operating in Southeast Asia remains challenging, he concedes. “Space is really hot right now,” he says. But “you really have to prove yourself to investors, show a track record.”

Apart from brisk production growth, mu Space has expanded its workforce to 160, and Yenbamroong aims to make it 300 by year’s end. “My goal is to work with people who have the same passion for space as I do,” he says. Homegrown talent isn’t an issue, he claims, with a pipeline of engineers who studied overseas or worked in related industries. Still, plans are far from assured, especially amid a global belt-tightening. “We’ll probably see fewer investments,” says Therese Jones, senior director of policy at the Satellite Industry Association, who expects the industry to consolidate in the next few years.

As the countdown continues for mu Space’s biggest test—putting its own satellite into orbit—Yenbamroong looks forward to proving skeptics wrong. “Everyone will see we are no longer this company that is fresh out of the box. We’ll show people we are for real,” he said. “We’re ready to lift off.”