The day after Donald Trump declared election victoryand a NATO technology watchdog looks at a miniature shoebox-sized factory designed to produce semiconductors in space.

Chris O’Connor, in his black bomber jacket and military haircut, spent the last year in Europe looking for companies to support them. NATO a technological advantage over Russia and China; a task that has become even more urgent in the last 36 hours as the region prepares Trump 2.0. He believes he has found one here in the gray industrial area on the outskirts of Cardiff in Wales.

Space Forge wants to send satellites equipped with small clean rooms into space; these satellites will grow semiconductor crystals before returning them safely to Earth.

Speaking to an office crowded with newly hired staff, chief technology officer Andrew Bacon predicts that a Space Forge satellite could eventually produce enough semiconductor material to power tens of thousands of phones. Bacon says he’s more interested in making chargers for electric cars to combat climate change and Space Forge’s potential to destroy entire industries that pollute the planet.

But O’Connor is here because Space Forge has attracted the attention of the €1 billion ($1 billion) NATO Innovation Fund (NIF). Manufacturing semiconductors in space, free of dirt, air and gravity, has the potential to deliver efficiencies that could create superior versions of military tools such as radar.

“The distance the radar can travel (meaning it can see and how fast it can do it) can be significantly improved by using these materials,” says O’Connor, explaining why Space Forge is among NIF’s top six upcoming investments. was announced to the public.

Besides Space Forge, the one-year-old NIF’s investments include battlefield robots, a company that produces a lighter version of carbon fiber used to make cars and rockets, and several space startups.

This is the alliance’s first foray into the high-risk, high-reward world of venture capital, using its members’ money to fund the experiment. Space Forge has never actually produced semiconductor materials in space. The only time the company tried to launch its satellites, the Virgin Orbit rocket that carried them around failed 177km above Earth before crashing into the ocean. O’Connor, one of three partners in the fund, is optimistic that there is no guarantee the investments will work. “We were given a mandate to take that risk,” he says.