06/09/2026
SpaceX co-founder Jim Cantrell wants to become the Henry Ford of space. 🚀
Cantrell, one of the early founders of SpaceX, visited Turku recently — not because of space, but because of the sea.
Cantrell took part in the Initiative event as a startup competition judge and is also an advisor to Finnish startup Seatom, which is developing small nuclear power solutions for ships. Finland is already familiar territory for him: Cantrell was also an early investor in Finnish satellite company ICEYE.
Today, through his company Phantom Space, Cantrell is working toward a much bigger vision: making access to space dramatically cheaper and more open.
The company wants to build what he describes as a kind of “app store for space” — an open ecosystem where satellite data could be accessed and used by entrepreneurs and developers around the world. His ambition is that, one day, starting a space company could cost €1,000 instead of hundreds of millions.
“The magic is opening up the data to people who will figure out how to use it.”
Cantrell compares the opportunity to Henry Ford’s Model T: not just a cheaper product, but something that created an entirely new market and surrounding infrastructure.
And he sees Finland as a particularly strong environment for building deep technology.
A fascinating read on space, entrepreneurship, AI, Finland and what happens when access to powerful technologies becomes radically cheaper.
Read the full article in Turun Sanomat (in Finnish, subscriber access):
https://lnkd.in/dD23A-SQ
