Former senior SpaceX government Tom Ochinero is teaming up with SpaceX alum-turned-VC Achal Upadhyaya and certainly one of Sequoia’s high finance leaders, Spencer Hemphill, on a brand new enterprise referred to as Interlagos Capital, TechCrunch has realized.
There’s little public info obtainable about Interlagos, and the trio didn’t reply to TechCrunch’s request for remark. The corporate was formally integrated within the state of Delaware on March 7, and it was registered as an out-of-state firm with California solely days in the past, on April 11. Ochinero, Upadhyaya and Hemphill are all listed on the paperwork. The principal handle is in El Segundo, California.
A trademark utility for “Interlagos” was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace on April 4. That utility lists an handle an identical to the one discovered on the corporate’s enterprise registration. The applying states that the corporate will deal in “enterprise capital companies; enterprise capital funding companies, specifically, offering financing to rising and start-up firms.”
Ochinero departed from SpaceX in February after a virtually 10-year stint on the firm, the place he finally turned senior vice chairman of business enterprise. In that position, he helped SpaceX develop into the undisputed international lead in business launch. Individuals aware of the matter advised CNBC on the time that Ochinero was resigning “to take care of a household medical matter.”
With Interlagos, he’s teaming up with one other SpaceX alum — Upadhyaya — who spent a decade in engineering roles at SpaceX earlier than becoming a member of the funding agency Cantos as a enterprise associate in 2022. He left someday this yr, in line with his LinkedIn. At Cantos, Upadhyaya’s bets included satellite tv for pc bus producer Apex House and movement management system developer Salient Movement, each startups headed by ex-SpaceX founders.
Spencer Hemphill, a finance government, is rounding out the crew. He’s coming from Sequoia, the place he additionally spent 10 years. He departed someday this yr, leaving the agency as assistant controller.
Ochinero is simply the newest SpaceX government to maneuver from the behemoth house firm into enterprise investing. Individuals leaving SpaceX to discovered different firms or put money into them is standard sufficient that there’s a web site devoted to connecting the 2 teams. Different notable buyers within the SpaceX-to-VC pipeline embody Founders Fund’s Scott Nolan, who was a really early SpaceX worker, and Alpine House Ventures’ Bulent Altan.