The archive · Space, Robots, Defence · Strategic decision · 2020–2026
Interlune: $500M in helium-3 orders before its first lunar harvest
Ex-Blue Origin leaders are selling lunar helium-3 to quantum and DOE customers, booking nearly $500M in orders and a NASA contract before mining starts.
Interlune
What the business is
Interlune is a Seattle natural-resources company, founded in 2020, developing compact, low-power machinery to harvest helium-3 and other gases from lunar regolith, while separately working to separate helium-3 from terrestrial helium supplies. It aims to become the first U.S. company to commercialize resources from space, with quantum-computing firms and the U.S. Department of Energy as anchor buyers.
Starting capital：$18 million in venture seed funding to date (company-reported as of May 2025): a $1.85M seed in 2022, then a $15.5M tranche revealed in SEC filings and covered by TechCrunch on 2024-02-02.
How it started
Founded in Seattle in 2020 by a team of government and industry veterans, Interlune spent years in stealth. TechCrunch reported on 2024-02-02 that SEC filings showed a $15.5M funding tranche — its first public financing signal since a $1.85M 2022 seed — and quoted CTO Gary Lai, who spent 20 years at Blue Origin: "We aim to be the first company that harvests natural resources from the moon to use here on Earth." CEO Rob Meyerson was president of Blue Origin for 15 years.
What happened
On May 7, 2025 Interlune announced its first commercial customer: Maybell Quantum agreed to buy thousands of liters of helium-3 per year from 2029 to 2035 for its dilution refrigerators, and Interlune also signed a purchase agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program. On May 4, 2026 NASA awarded Interlune a sole-source, firm-fixed-price SBIR Phase III contract worth $6.9M over 18 months to build a payload that will collect lunar regolith, heat it on the Moon and measure the volatile gases released — helium-3 and hydrogen among them — with a launch targeted for 2028 on a commercial CLPS lander; Interlune said it then held nearly $500M in binding helium-3 purchase orders.
How it ended up
Still pre-extraction: the payload is scheduled to fly in 2028, and first helium-3 deliveries to Maybell run from 2029 to 2035. What Interlune had proven by May 2026 was the demand side — DOE and quantum-computing purchase agreements plus NASA's contract for the harvesting technology — not yet the lunar supply itself.
Background
Interlune is a Seattle company, founded in 2020 by government and industry veterans — CEO Rob Meyerson ran Blue Origin for 15 years, and CTO Gary Lai was its chief architect for space transportation — that aims to become the first U.S. company to commercialize resources from space. It stayed in stealth until SEC filings revealed a $15.5M funding tranche in early 2024, after a $1.85M seed in 2022.
The bet is that helium-3 from lunar regolith is a real market: quantum computers cool their qubits in dilution refrigerators that run on helium-3, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Isotope Program is a buyer. In May 2025 Interlune signed its first commercial customer — Maybell Quantum, which agreed to take thousands of liters a year from 2029 to 2035 — plus a DOE purchase agreement.
On May 4, 2026 NASA awarded Interlune a sole-source SBIR Phase III contract of $6.9M over 18 months to develop a payload that heats lunar regolith on the Moon and measures the volatile gases released — helium-3 and hydrogen included — targeting a 2028 launch on a commercial CLPS lander. The company says it holds nearly $500M in binding helium-3 purchase orders from DOE and quantum-computing customers.
Extraction has not happened yet: the first payload flies in 2028 and deliveries to Maybell begin in 2029. What is proven as of May 2026 is demand and government validation; whether the lunar harvester can be built, launched and delivered on schedule is the open part of the bet.
What has to be true
- Quantum's cooling problem is dated demand: dilution refrigerators need helium-3 now, and Maybell committed to thousands of liters a year from 2029 to 2035.
- Contracts before hardware pay for the hard part: DOE and quantum purchase orders, plus NASA's SBIR Phase III, funded the long road to a lunar harvester.
- Small, efficient machinery is the technical wedge: Interlune claims the smallest, lowest-power harvesters, cheap enough to fly to the Moon and operate there.
- Government money doubles as validation: NASA and NSF awards test the extraction technology while the company books commercial offtake.
What can be applied
When a resource is scarce and demand is dated, sell the supply contract before you build the mine: customers, not rockets, prove the market.
Aftermath
As of May 4, 2026, Interlune was building engineering development units and flight hardware under NASA's $6.9M SBIR Phase III contract, with the payload set to launch in 2028 on a commercial robotic lander from NASA's CLPS program. The mission will measure helium-3 and hydrogen in lunar regolith with a mass spectrometer based on NASA's MSOLO instrument. Revenue from helium-3 sales — nearly $500M in binding orders from DOE and quantum firms — is meant to fund later lunar harvesting; the company also held contracts from NSF and the Texas Space Commission, with $18M in seed raised to date.
Sources
- Interlune Awarded $6.9 Million Contract from NASA for Lunar Resource Development
- NASA to launch full-scale development of 'resource-extraction technology from lunar soil'… invests $6.9 million in a private company
- Interlune Announces Maybell Quantum as First Commercial Customer to Buy Helium-3
- Secretive moon startup led by ex-Blue Origin leaders raises new tranche of funding
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