News Summary

• Public money does more than support frontier technologies, it helps to shape the markets that grow around them.
• Through decisions on contracts, grants, benchmarks, infrastructure and purchasing routes, governments influence which firms learn first, which systems are adopted and whether markets stay open or closed.
• Concentration is already evident in parts of the space sector.
• We call on governments to adopt safeguards that take account of how their procurement, adoption and evaluation decisions for cutting-edge technology will shape future markets and affect the scope for later competition.