Rick Tumlinson

Rick Tumlinson is a Partner and Co-Founder at SpaceFund, an Austin-based tokenized venture capital firm managing a portfolio of nineteen commercial space startups. Over his thirty-year career shaping the private space exploration sector, he has founded or co-founded multiple organizations, including Deep Space Industries and the Space Frontier Foundation. He previously worked under Gerard O'Neill at the Princeton Space Studies Institute, served as a founding board member of the X-Prize Foundation, and helped inspire the Artemis mission. Recognized with a World Technology Award alongside Craig Venter, the six-time Congressional witness also established the Permission to Dream project to distribute telescopes globally. Named one of the most influential people in the industry by Space News, his current work centers on financing commercial space access and supporting critical infrastructure development for future space settlement.