Why Redwire Stock Was Blasting Higher This Week
Key Points
Plans are reportedly underway to place data centers in space, and Redwire may get involved in such efforts.
It already has business relationships with Blue Origin and SpaceX, two companies apparently behind these lofty plans.
The stock of next-generation space and defense company Redwire (NYSE: RDW) was a hit over the past few trading sessions -- and it generally wasn't because of any proprietary news from the company.
Rather, a report about two associated businesses helped propel its shares higher; they were up by nearly 14% week-to-date as of early afternoon Friday, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
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Space for growth
That article, published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, went into detail about the ambitions of Blue Origin and SpaceX to build data centers that orbit in space. Both companies, respectively founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, are business partners of Redwire.
Image source: Getty Images.
Citing an unidentified "person familiar with the matter," the financial newspaper wrote that Blue Origin has a dedicated team developing the technology needed to float artificial intelligence (AI)-supporting data centers in the ether. It added that SpaceX intends to use an advanced version of its high-profile Starlink satellites to host AI hardware payloads.
While this might sound like science fiction to some extent, the Journal reported that Alphabet and its business partner, Planet Labs, plan to launch a limited AI-in-space effort in 2027. The two companies plan to launch two test satellites into orbit housing tensor processing units (TPUs), the specialized AI processors developed by Alphabet's Google unit.
A fighting chance
There aren't many companies like Redwire that specialize in providing services and equipment for space missions. Adding to that is the fact that the company is not only well known to both Blue Origin and SpaceX, it's also done business with them. This gives it an excellent chance of being part of both their extraterrestrial data center plans, which alone is reason to be bullish on the company's stock.
Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Redwire, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.