Who Insures a Trillion-Dollar Space Economy? ORBITInsure Warren AI and the Parametric Insurance Gap

Who insures a trillion-dollar space economy when 97% of its assets fly without coverage?

Space infrastructure is becoming foundational to the global economy. GPS-dependent logistics, satellite internet, Earth observation, defence communications. All of it depends on assets in orbit that are, by current standards, almost entirely uninsured. The European Space Agency tracks more than 27,000 pieces of debris. Launch cadences are accelerating. And the insurance architecture meant to backstop this expansion is still running on processes designed for a market that no longer exists.

Underwriting can take months. Risk assessments rely on fragmented data. Premiums price out everyone except the largest operators. That was manageable when the addressable market was a few dozen GEO satellites. It is not manageable when SpaceX launches more mass to orbit in a single week than most countries did in a decade.

The market that insurance built — and then broke

The space insurance market has existed for decades, but it was designed for a different industry. When the addressable universe was a few dozen government and telecom satellites in geostationary orbit, underwriters could assess each mission individually. Premiums were high but predictable. Claims were rare.

That world ended around 2022.

The rise of LEO mega-constellations, the entry of venture-backed launch providers, and the explosion of smallsat manufacturing changed both the volume and the risk profile of what reaches orbit. Insurers did not adapt. The result was the worst loss year in the industry's history: 2023 produced approximately $995 million in claims against $557 million in premiums, a loss ratio of 179%, according to market data compiled by New Space Economy. Viasat's ViaSat-3 Americas suffered an antenna anomaly generating a $445 million claim. Inmarsat's 6-F2 satellite was declared a likely total loss. SES's O3b mPower broadband satellites experienced power distribution failures that cut operational capacity to a fraction of specification, producing claims of roughly $472 million.

The market recovered somewhat after that, but the structural problem remained. By mid-2026, North America remains the largest regional market, but the protection gap has only widened as launch cadence accelerates.

Growing: The demand side is real

The macro case for space insurance is straightforward to state. The global space economy is projected to exceed $1.8 trillion by 2035. Satellite manufacturing, launch services, orbital infrastructure, and downstream applications all require financial backstops. Insurance-linked securities (the same structures used for catastrophe bonds covering natural disaster risk) are beginning to be discussed for space portfolios. Marsh's U.S. aviation and space practice leader confirmed that multiple companies have approached the broker about insurance for orbital data centers. Lonestar Data Holdings held a briefing at Marsh's London offices for the Lloyd's market, attended by about 25 insurers.

Interest is forming on both sides of the table. What has been missing is a mechanism to price risk at the speed and scale the market now demands. The demand pull is not theoretical. It is showing up in broker inquiries, syndicate briefings, and operator procurement documents.

Falling: The old underwriting model

The traditional approach cannot scale because it depends on manual workflows. An underwriter requesting months of satellite telemetry from an operator who does not want to share it. A broker compiling fragmented data across three different time zones. A premium that reflects uncertainty more than actual risk because nobody has a real-time view of what is happening in orbit.

The numbers make the problem concrete. According to New Space Economy's March 2026 analysis of the orbital insurance market, fewer than 300 of the roughly 10,000 active LEO satellites carry in-orbit insurance, a coverage rate below 1%. The remaining 9,700-plus assets fly without financial protection, not because their operators lack interest, but because the cost and complexity of obtaining coverage make it impractical.

This is the gap the startup is trying to close.

New: ORBITInsure and Warren AI

ORBITInsure was founded in 2024 by Lior Herman and Meidad Pariente, based in Virginia with a London office. The company describes itself as building the "risk intelligence infrastructure layer" for the space economy. In June 2026, it launched Warren AI, a purpose-built underwriting and risk scoring platform for space assets.

Warren AI is structured in three tiers:

Armstrong produces institutional-grade risk assessments in minutes rather than months, evaluating mission exposure across orbital parameters, environmental factors, and operational history. Glen handles parametric risk modeling. These are trigger-based insurance structures where payouts are activated by measurable events (orbital anomalies, payload degradation, transponder failure) rather than loss adjustment after the fact. Galaxy, still in development, is the policy automation layer designed to turn risk intelligence into scalable insurance workflows.

The platform generates a "Warren Score," a continuous dynamic risk rating for any given space asset or mission profile. It pulls from mission data, space weather feeds, debris conjunction alerts, and operational telemetry. It combines aerospace engineering data with actuarial models that traditional insurers rarely cross-reference.

The company did not wait for launch to validate the concept. ORBITInsure has already secured customers, signed strategic cooperation agreements across both the space and insurance sectors, and established industry partnerships ahead of going live. The platform is available as SaaS with a free tier.

What changes when risk becomes visible

The implications of a functioning space insurance market extend beyond the insurance vertical itself.

If Warren AI or a competing platform can deliver continuous, data-driven risk scoring that insurers trust, the downstream effects cascade: premiums become affordable enough for smallsat operators to carry coverage, which reduces their cost of capital, which accelerates constellation build-out, which increases demand for launch services and ground infrastructure. The feedback loop connects insurance pricing directly to sector growth rates.

The same data infrastructure that enables underwriting also creates a tradable risk market. If space risk becomes measurable and standardized, insurance-linked securities for orbital assets become viable. They would transfer risk from insurance balance sheets to institutional investors the way catastrophe bonds did for hurricane and earthquake exposure. That would add a new asset class to the portfolio construction toolkit while simultaneously expanding the capacity of the space insurance market.

Comparison: Traditional underwriter vs. AI-native platform

The comparison highlights something specific. The traditional model is slow and data-poor for a market that has stopped being either. AI-native underwriting can outperform legacy workflows on speed. Whether the insurance industry will accept risk scores generated by models it did not build and does not control is a regulatory and trust problem, not a technical one.

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