Rocket Lab on the way to Mars
Plus: Get your tickets for our Christmas Party!
Kia ora Caffeinators,
Annnnnnd I am BACK. Huge thanks to Nick for holding down the fort while I was away and what a pleasure it is to be back on the tools. Had a wonderful trip over to Barcelona and the UK but there were limited opportunities for me to yell about how great NZ startups are while there so it’s great o be back in my natural environment.
Here’s what’s drinking in startup news today:
Rocket Lab on the way to Mars
Get your tickets for the Founders & Operators Xmas party
Google to explore building solar-powered data centres in space
Icehouse Ventures raise $100k for charity in Silent Auction
As always, thank you to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription or simply recommended Caffeine to friends and whānau. We couldn’t do any of this without you.
Finn and the CAFFEINE team
Rocket Lab on the way to Mars: It’s hard to overstate the success of Rocket Lab and its uplifting effect on our entire ecosystem so I won’t belabour the point too much but there are some bits of news which really drive the point home - like the fact Rocket Lab is on the way to Mars. Well, two rocket ships it built in partnership with NASA and UC Berkley are.
After being given a lift by Blue Origin at the launch pad in Florida on Friday, the pair of spacecraft - part of NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) - are on their way to the red planet to conduct vital research. The duo - dubbed Blue and Gold - will study the interaction between solar wind and Martian atmosphere, helped by their unique dual viewpoint.
They’ll provide an insight into how the planet’s climate has changed overtime as its protective atmosphere was lashed away by solar wind to the point where it can no longer support liquid water on the surface. The pair will be the first multi-spacecraft science mission to Mars. Rocket Lab says they have established contact with both spacecraft since launch and systems are operating as they should. Blue and Gold are scheduled to in arrive in late 2027 with science commencing in 2028. Incredible mahi and congratulations to the team.
Get your tickets for the Founders & Operators Xmas party courtesy of Airwallex and Caffeine: It’s frightening to be talking about Christmas parties already but here we are. We’re putting on an end-of-year celebration for the people who power New Zealand’s startup scene - founders, operators, investors and community contributors.
It’s been a big year for Aotearoa’s startup ecosystem. We’ve launched things, funded things, fixed things, and probably failed a few too. Through it all, the energy, ambition, and chaos never stopped and that we all deserve a drink and a good old celebration.
Join us for the Founder-Operator Christmas party - with all of the incredible people who make New Zealand’s startup world what it is. Airwallex have kindly put on good food, drinks and music for the community to wrap up the year together. Bring your team, your friends, or just yourself - everyone’s welcome.
Who it’s for
This event is designed for operators, founders, and leadership teams in the startup community.
Partner spotlight: Airwallex
We’re proud to partner with Airwallex, a global payments and financial platform built to support ambitious operators. Airwallex helps businesses scale across borders with multi-currency accounts, borderless cards, and streamlined global payments, removing the friction of traditional banking so leaders can focus on growth. Whether it’s expanding into new markets, paying overseas teams, or managing FX, Airwallex is giving Kiwi companies the financial infrastructure to compete on the world stage.
Google to explore building solar-powered data centres in space: This story came out while I was away but considering the Rocket Lab news above I have an excuse to cover it now. Earlier in November Google released a research paper on its blog titled ‘Exploring a space-based, scalable AI infrastructure system design’ which is a wordy way of saying ‘Maybe we build data centres in space?’. The paper describes early work on ‘Project Suncatcher’, a theoretical system of orbiting solar powered satellites harvesting the endless energy of the sun to power vast quantities of compute and then beaming that data down to Earth.
While the engineering challenges are obviously immense, it’s not as crazy a plan as it might first sound. We fundamentally already know how to process and transmit data in space - we have many, many satellites doing just that as we speak. We also have an urgent issue of our demand for AI compute radically outstripping our planets constraints - data centre power demand is predicted to exceed the entire nation of Japan by 2030.
As Google notes in is paper, the sun emits more power than 100 trillion times humanity’s total electricity production. In the right orbit, a solar panel can be up to 8 times more productive than on earth, and produce power nearly continuously, reducing the need for batteries. In the future, space may be the best place to scale AI compute. Since we seemingly have an endless demand for AI, we may need an endless power source. It also may happen sooner than you think, Google is planning some exploratory missions in 2027 to test feasibility of early designs. Read more in the research blog here.
Icehouse Ventures raise $100k for charity in Silent Auction: Writing stories about billion dollar valuations and multi million dollar raises week in and week out can make one a little desensitised to the value of a dollar. So it’s lovely to see stories like this which remind us of the people in our community making sure some of that money is going to the many good causes which exist outside of our ecosystem.
Icehouse Ventures have announced its 2025 Showcase Silent Auction raised $98,753.10 for Big Buddy Mentoring Trust. Big Buddy is a charity that has been matching boys and teenage boys without a dad in their lives to volunteer Big Buddies for over 27 years. Through carefully matched one-on-one relationships, they help these boys build confidence, develop life skills, and reach their full potential, creating ripples of positive change across families and communities throughout New Zealand. Good on the team. We love to see it.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Want to get in touch with a news tip, bit of feedback or just to chat? Email hello@caffeinedaily.co