A little-known startup just used AI to make a moon dust battery for Blue Origin

Artificial intelligence has created a device that turns moon dust into energy.The moon vacuum, which was unveiled on Wednesday by Blue Origin at Amazon's re:Invent 2025 conference in Las Vegas, was built using critical technology from startup Istari Digital."So what it does is sucks up moon dust and it extracts the heat from it so it can be used as an energy source, like turning moon dust into a battery," Istari CEO Will Roper told CNBC's Morgan Brennan.Spacecraft carrying out missions on the lunar surface are typically constrained by lunar night, the two-week period every 28 days during which the moon is cast in darkness and temperatures experience extreme drops, crippling hardware and rendering it useless unless a strong, long-lasting power source is present."Kind of like vacuuming at home, but creating your own electricity while you do it," he added.The battery was completely designed by AI, said Roper, who was assistant secretary of the Air Force under President Donald Trump's first term and is known for transforming the acquisition process at both the Air Force and, at the time, the newly created Space Force.A major part of the breakthrough in Istari's technology is the way in which it handles and limits AI hallucinations.Roper said the platform takes all the requirements a part needs and creates guardrails or a "fence around the playground" that the AI can't leave while coming up with designs."Within that playground, AI can generate to its heart's content," he said."In the case of Blue Origin's moon battery, [it] doesn't tell you the design was a good one, but it tells us that all of the requirements were met, the standards were met, things like that that you got to check before you go operational," he added.Istari is backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and already works with the U.S. government, including as a prime contractor with Lockheed Martin on the experimental x-56A unmanned aircraft.Watch the full interview above and go deeper into the business of the stars with the Manifest Space podcast.