When Baiju Bhatt stepped away from his role as chief creative officer at Robinhood last year, only those close to him could have predicted his next move: launching a space company built around tech that the aerospace industry has largely dismissed, and which might be more groundbreaking than anyone realizes. If people aren’t paying much attention, that’s just fine with Bhatt, who co-founded the trading app in 2013, five years after earning his master’s degree in mathematics at Stanford. It means less competition for his new company, Aetherflux, which has so far raised $60 million on its quest to prove that beaming solar power from space isn’t science fiction but a new chapter for both renewable energy and national defense. “Until you do stuff in space, if you happen to be an aerospace company, you’re actually an aspiring space company,” Bhatt said on Wednesday night at a TechCrunch StrictlyVC event held in a glass-lined structure on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. “I would like to transition from ‘aspiring space company’ to ‘space company’ sooner.”

Full profile : Baiju Bhat, the founder of Aetherflux and the future of his defense and energy tech company.

For more see the OODA Company Profile on Aetherflux.