Battery weight reduced by 40% and freed from germanium constraints! Rocket Lab (RKLB.US) lightweight battery taps into the incremental market for space AI

According to Zhicheng Finance APP, Rocket Lab (RKLB.US), dubbed as "SpaceX's rival," announced on Tuesday that its inverted metamorphic (IMM) Apex solar cell has officially started production. This is the company's latest generation solar cell for cutting-edge commercial aerospace applications.

The company revealed that this solar cell has a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 31.5%, its weight is reduced by as much as 40%, and it does not require the use of germanium substrates which have been supply-constrained for a long time. For the past 30 years, traditional multi-junction solar cells have relied on this mineral material.

"While delivering superior performance, IMM Apex also effectively and proactively addresses real-world challenges such as rising material costs and supply chain constraints," said Rocket Lab USA President Brad Clevenger. "With IMM Apex, customers gain access to a high-efficiency, lightweight, germanium-free product, offering proven reliability and shorter production cycles. IMM Apex is designed to power the most ambitious aerospace missions and even space-based data center projects in a more cost-effective manner, without sacrificing performance."

As of press time, driven by this positive news, RKLB's share price surged nearly 6% in U.S. pre-market trading.

Rocket Lab's IMM Apex is a space-grade multi-junction solar cell designed to power satellites and other spacecraft. It is a power-generating device, not an energy storage cell. Utilizing Inverted Metamorphic (IMM) technology, it absorbs different bands of sunlight via semiconductor junctions with various band gaps and converts it into electricity, eliminating the need for traditional germanium substrates. The company's disclosed initial photoelectric conversion efficiency is 31.5%, with a 40% reduction in cell mass. The core value lies in providing efficient power with lower weight while mitigating the impact of germanium supply constraints and rising costs.

Rocket Lab Rides the "Space AI Computing Infrastructure" Wave

Rocket Lab's stock price has soared 160% since 2025, which appears to be a result of both "the company's own fundamental and order structure leap" and "a sector-wide valuation reset in aerospace." The former is the main driver, while the latter—including the unprecedented boom in commercial aviation and valuation gains led by SpaceX, as well as the bullish narrative of "space AI data centers/space-based computing infrastructure construction"—has played a significant role in driving sentiment and valuation multiples. This market dynamic is a major factor behind Rocket Lab’s meteoric rise.

This product upgrade is expected to enhance the competitiveness of Rocket Lab’s space power supply business by reducing material dependency, lightening power system load, and shortening production cycles. According to company announcements, IMM Apex's initial lifespan photoelectric conversion efficiency is 31.5% and cell weight is reduced by 40%. The product can be mechanically and electrically interfaced to replace conventional germanium-based products, reducing the costs for customers to retrofit existing systems. Commercially, these improvements strengthen Rocket Lab's bid for orders in the commercial aerospace sector where weight, delivery time, and supply chain reliability are critical.

For company performance, the new product offers existing aerospace systems a path to expand sales further. Rocket Lab’s Q2 revenue reached $234 million, up 62% year-on-year, with Q3 revenue expected between $250 million and $265 million. Reducing dependence on germanium helps lower the fluctuation of material cost and supply risk, and compatibility with existing systems lowers customer adoption barriers. However, the company has not revealed the specific order size or profit contribution from IMM Apex yet. At this stage, the clearer positive is the substantial improvement in competitiveness and delivery capabilities of its commercial space product line.

For Musk’s vision of space-based AI data centers, higher power generation per unit mass and more advanced photoelectric conversion efficiency help significantly lower the mass needed per unit of power delivered into orbit, freeing up launch capacity for computing equipment and cooling systems. Freeing production from germanium substrates also secures future large-scale procurement. Thus, the deployment of large AI data centers in space orbit is undoubtedly a highly significant potential new market for this technology, although its current commercial base remains the power supply needs of satellites and other space missions.

Musk Anchors SpaceX Valuation to Kardashev Type II Civilization

The underlying logic of space-based AI data centers is to capture solar energy directly in orbit for computation, transmitting data back to Earth, and thus reducing reliance on terrestrial electricity grid expansions, land, and cooling water.

By selecting appropriate dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbits, near-continuous sunlight can be obtained, reducing the need for energy storage. However, the low temperatures of space don’t mean chips automatically cool: nearly all the power consumed by computational devices eventually turns into heat, and the vacuum environment lacks air convection. Waste heat must be transferred via heat pipes or fluid loops to radiators and then radiated away.

Therefore, the weight, deployment, and launch cost of large-scale heat dissipation structures, chip radiation resistance, high-bandwidth inter-satellite communication, and in-orbit maintenance remain key bottlenecks for scalable construction. Lightweight solar cells undoubtedly greatly improve the power supply component, but the overall economic viability of the system depends on the maturity of all these engineering conditions.

Just after “AI chip superpower” Nvidia released a strong earnings report, raising global AI capital expenditures and triggering a new bull run in the AI computing power value chain, Musk is pushing the expansion boundary of AI infrastructure from the ground into space: He and SpaceX (SPCX.US) plan to launch the first batch of AI data center satellites using Nvidia’s next-gen compute clusters—the Vera Rubin architecture AI GPU-dominated clusters—in Q4 2027, and form “significant scale” by 2028. This does not mean ground-based data centers will be quickly replaced, but rather that space-based computing could bypass critical bottlenecks in terrestrial grids, land, and water, becoming a new layer of AI compute supply.

Musk and other SpaceX executives’ fundamental view is that global data center compute demand could reach 235 GW by 2030, with 70% for AI, but the Earth’s grid, land, permitting, and environmental capacities can’t support terawatt-level expansion. The Sun provides about 99.8% of the energy in the solar system. Thus, SpaceX plans to begin commercializing modular orbital compute by the end of this decade, with a long-term goal of deploying 100 GW of AI computing capacity into orbit each year—which, if running continuously, would consume about one-fifth of the U.S. electricity generation in 2025.

SpaceX’s prospectus clearly defines "building an ever-expanding spacefaring civilization, ultimately toward a Type II civilization that harnesses the full energy of the Sun" as its long-term paradigm shift. Musk himself has said that lunar satellite factories, mass drivers, and annual AI hardware deployments exceeding 100 TW could drive humanity to make “meaningful, positive progress” toward Type II civilization. Thus, orbital AI data centers are not standalone projects but the foundational layer connecting “Earth-limited computing—solar system-scale energy—multiplanetary civilization.”

The so-called Kardashev Type II Civilization refers to one that can utilize all of the energy output by its home star. Type III would command the energy of an entire galaxy—far beyond the current SpaceX narrative.