**Commercial Space Station Race Heats Up: Vast Led by Jedd McCaleb Accelerates with Major Funding**

The next frontier of the space industry is beginning to move. According to Forbes, startup Vast is currently raising $300 million in a new funding round, with the company's valuation reaching $2 billion. Led by Balerion Space Ventures, this round significantly advances the realization of private space station concepts.

**Founder's Personal Wealth Supports the Company**

Interestingly, one of Vast's major investors is Jedd McCaleb. Known in the cryptocurrency industry, he has built billions of dollars in assets as the founder of Ripple and Stellar, and has expressed his intention to invest up to $1 billion of his personal wealth—part of his assets—into this space station venture. This exemplifies how influential individual investors are becoming in private space development.

**Concrete Implementation Schedule**

Vast's plans are quite ambitious. They aim to launch a prototype of their first space station, "Haven - 1," in 2026, and to launch key components of the second-generation "Haven - 2" in 2028. These facilities are intended to serve as private platforms replacing NASA-operated International Space Station, opening a new era of research and industrial use in low Earth orbit.

Jedd McCaleb's vision for space stations has already garnered industry attention this March, attracting interest as a multi-billion-dollar large-scale project. This movement clearly indicates that the private space industry is rapidly maturing and that the era of individual capital realizing large-scale infrastructure projects has arrived.