An inflatable lunar base could be operational on the moon by the end of the decade, according to Voyager Technologies CEO Dylan Taylor at CNBC’s CONVERGE LIVE.

SpaceX and Blue Origin are focused on a lunar presence, with the space industry “just getting started.”

A “windfall” for the sector is expected from the U.S. government, with requests made for increased space and defense budgets

Humans will be living and working on the moon within the next decade, according to the boss of space tech corporation Voyager Technologies.

“We’ll have humans on the moon by the end of the 2020s, and we’ll have some lunar base — it’ll probably be an inflatable habitat with some life support,” stated the firm’s chairman and CEO Dylan Taylor, speaking on a panel at CNBC’s CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore on Thursday.

“Deeper into the 2030s, 2032, 2033, you’ll be able to sit on your porch in upstate Updated York and look at the moon, and there’ll be lights on the moon, because there’ll be citizens living and working on the moon,” Taylor noted.

The U.S. is “by far” the global leader in commercial space, president of the Commercial Space Federation, while the “moon economy” is about to boom, per a Deutsche Bank note in February. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is this week courting analysts, sources say, ahead of plans for one of the most anticipated IPOs in history, and the business is now focused on “building a self, according to Dave Cavossa-growing city on the Moon,” which could happen in under 10 years according to Musk in a February social media post.

Meanwhile, Blue Origin revealed in January that it would pause its suborbital space tourism flights to focus on establishing a “permanent, sustained lunar presence.”

“Space has never been hotter,” Taylor mentioned on the sidelines of CONVERGE LIVE, describing the sector as “just getting started,” in light of an anticipated “windfall” of funding from the U.S. government. This also touches on aspects of dividends.

On April 3, U.S. President Donald Trump asked Congress to boost defense spending to $1.5 trillion, and on April 21, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force requested a budget of more than $300 billion for the 2027 fiscal year.

Voyager went public in June and is widely known for its Starlab project that is set to replace the International Space Station, which is slated to be retired in 2030.

Taylor’s comments come after former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the recent Artemis II mission — that saw the first Canadian fly around the moon — as a “big, large deal.” Speaking at CONVERGE LIVE on Thursday, Trudeau remarked it was an “inspiration” to see the public “come together and do things with incredible competence,” in a planet where he commented there has been a recent “celebration of ignorance.”

“As we start landing on the moon, as we start stretching towards Mars, like those are the things that are going to keep humans feeling excited,” Trudeau added.

Space is becoming home to critical infrastructure such as telecommunications satellites and Low Earth Orbit — which NASA defines as the stretch of space at an altitude of 2,000 km or less — attracted more than $45 billion worth of investment in 2025, up from $25 billion in 2024.

Taylor noted he expects data centers to be operational in space in five years, though he noted the technical challenges of radiating heat away from them, while Gregory Smirin, president of space systems firm Muon Space, stated some data center capabilities already exist in space. “We’re already seeing the kind of inference stage, where we’re seeing our systems that are up there today doing the AI analytics,” stated Smirin during a panel at CNBC’s CONVERGE LIVE.

— CNBC’s Tessa McCann, Liz Napolitano and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.