Former OpenAI exec Kevin Weil is now on the board of Stoke Space
Quick Answer
Kevin Weil, former OpenAI executive, joins the board of Stoke Space, a startup developing reusable rockets to rival SpaceX.
Quick Take
Kevin Weil, former OpenAI executive, joins the board of Stoke Space, a startup developing reusable rockets to rival SpaceX. Stoke has raised $1.34 billion, aiming to launch its Nova rocket, which promises full reusability, addressing the growing demand for launch services.
Key Points
- Stoke Space has raised $1.34 billion, including a $510 million Series D round.
- Weil previously served as OpenAI's chief product officer and led scientific research initiatives.
- The Nova rocket aims for complete reusability, a first in the industry.
- Military contracts are crucial for Stoke's success, leveraging Weil's defense experience.
- Stoke's approach addresses the increasing demand for launch capacity in the space sector.
📖 Reader Mode
~4 min readKevin Weil, a veteran tech executive known for stints at Twitter, Meta, Planet Labs and OpenAI, has joined the board of Stoke Space, a well-funded Seattle startup building reusable rockets to compete with SpaceX.
“It’s real simple for me,” Stoke CEO Andy Lapsa told TechCrunch of meeting Weil when he cofounded Stoke in 2020 and soon after joined Y Combinator’s winter batch. “I came out of engineering, started a company, had no idea how to fundraise. I had no idea how Silicon Valley worked. I had no network. Kevin [an early investor in the company with his wife Elizabeth, through their fund Scribble Ventures] comes with all of that background and was able to help me think about fundraising and getting the company off the ground.
The two kept talking while Lapsa raised $1.34 billion — including a $510 million Series D funding round in 2025 — to build a rapidly reusable rocket that could fly this year. Now, the time is apparently right for Weil to join the board as a director to help continue scaling the company. Stoke declined to make Weil available for an interview, and he didn’t respond to TechCrunch’s outreach.
Weil’s past work has focused on digital products and platforms, which aren’t obviously on Stoke’s roadmap. He was most recently the head of OpenAI’s efforts to accelerate scientific research, leaving the company after that program’s work was spread more widely across the frontier lab in April. He had previously served as OpenAI’s chief product officer from June 2024 until October 2025.
Weil’s last job raises one obvious question: OpenAI’s Sam Altman was reportedly kicking the tires on Stoke last year, contemplating an investment in his own SpaceX competitor. Could Weil be the link between the frontier AI lab and a possible partner in space? Lapsa declined to comment on “gossip and rumors” about OpenAI, saying Weil’s role was to focus on Stoke itself.
Stoke is building a rocket, Nova, that is intended to be completely reusable and can be flown again and again. No one has ever done that before, with the SpaceX coming the closest with its enormous Starship rocket. The technological challenges of reusing a rocket—particularly its ability to survive the extreme heat of reentering the Earth’s atmosphere from space—deterred even space investors with the deepest pockets. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, where Lapsa once worked, has flirted with the approach, but hasn’t prioritized it.
Now, though, SpaceX’s blockbuster stock market debut—with much of its value resting on Elon Musk’s promises that Starship will be flying operational missions this year—has proven Lapsa’s foresight. Despite many billions of dollars invested in new launch vehicles, there aren’t enough rockets to go around, and the next company to get a reasonably-priced rocket flying regularly promises to make a killing.
“The world is realizing that launch is still not solved,” Lapsa said. “The idea of full, rapid reuse was a little bit out there at that time…that’s now been rather normalized, and people see the inevitable now.”
Notably, the idea of building distributed data centers in space to leverage solar power and escape political restrictions on Earth has captured the imagination of some venture capitalists. The key obstacle there is the cost of getting all those computer chips into orbit. Space data centers “really only make sense with full rapid reuse,” Lapsa said, which could be a key differentiator for Stoke as its rocket starts flying.
Military contracts will also be key to the company’s success, and Weil has experience bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and the Department of Defense; he was one of four tech movers and shakers who joined the US Army Reserve in a bid to improve recruitment and cooperation between the Army and industry. And this isn’t his first time in the space business. Weil served as the president of Planet Labs, a satellite earth observation company, for three years as it went public 2021.
Whatever Weil can add to the company’s strategy as it closes in on delivering an operational launch vehicle, though, the company has to execute.
“We’ve got a good chunk of the risk behind us, we’ve got more to go,” Lapsa said. “We’ll work as hard as we can, and we’ll go when it’s ready.”
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Tim Fernholz is a journalist who writes about technology, finance and public policy. He has closely covered the rise of the private space industry and is the author of Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the New Space Race. Formerly, he was a senior reporter at Quartz, the global business news site, for more than a decade, and began his career as a political reporter in Washington, D.C. You can contact or verify outreach from Tim by emailing tim.fernholz@techcrunch.com or via an encrypted message to tim_fernholz.21 on Signal.
— Originally published at techcrunch.com
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