Previous senior SpaceX govt Tom Ochinero is teaming up with SpaceX alum-turned-VC Achal Upadhyaya and 1 of Sequoia’s best finance leaders, Spencer Hemphill, on a new enterprise named Interlagos Capital, TechCrunch has acquired.
There is very little general public information obtainable about Interlagos, and the trio did not answer to TechCrunch’s ask for for comment. The business was formally included in the point out of Delaware on March 7, and it was registered as an out-of-point out enterprise with California only days back, on April 11. Ochinero, Upadhyaya and Hemphill are all shown on the files. The principal address is in El Segundo, California.
A trademark application for “Interlagos” was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Business office on April 4. That application lists an tackle identical to the a single located on the company’s business registration. The application states that the company will deal in “venture funds expert services venture funds funding expert services, namely, delivering financing to emerging and start off-up corporations.”
Ochinero departed from SpaceX in February after a approximately 10-year stint at the corporation, in which he eventually turned senior vice president of professional business enterprise. In that part, he aided SpaceX mature into the undisputed world wide lead in commercial launch. Men and women familiar with the make a difference advised CNBC at the time that Ochinero was resigning “to attend to a family members health-related matter.”
With Interlagos, he is teaming up with one more SpaceX alum — Upadhyaya — who expended a decade in engineering roles at SpaceX before joining the investment firm Cantos as a undertaking companion in 2022. He left sometime this calendar year, according to his LinkedIn. At Cantos, Upadhyaya’s bets bundled satellite bus maker Apex Room and motion management system developer Salient Motion, each startups headed by ex-SpaceX founders.
Spencer Hemphill, a finance government, is rounding out the workforce. He’s coming from Sequoia, wherever he also spent 10 several years. He departed sometime this 12 months, leaving the business as assistant controller.
Ochinero is just the most recent SpaceX executive to go from the behemoth area corporation into venture investing. Folks leaving SpaceX to identified other businesses or commit in them is common enough that there’s a site dedicated to connecting the two groups. Other noteworthy investors in the SpaceX-to-VC pipeline include things like Founders Fund’s Scott Nolan, who was a very early SpaceX employee, and Alpine Place Ventures’ Bulent Altan.
