Founded by a crypto billionaire, Vast is developing the first-ever commercial space station, and IWC is now its official timekeeper. The IWC-Vast partnership continues the watchmaker’s recent involvement with commercial and civilian space travel, which included a series of special watches for the first all-civilian space flight in 2021.

The Vast control centre

Vast was founded in 2021 by Jed McCaleb, an entrepreneur who set up the now defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox and later helped develop Ripple, a crypto platform. With a ten-figure fortune from his crypto ventures, Mr McCaleb has funded Vast and its ambition of creating artificial gravity space stations.

Inside Haven-1

Sometime in 2026, Vast is planning to launch Haven-1, a small space station in low Earth orbit. Over the next two decades, Vast aims to build larger stations and eventually a fleet of them.

Haven-1 under construction

What can we expect from IWC partnership?

According to IWC, the tie-up will “enable IWC to… develop spaceflight-ready watches. At Vast headquarters, Vast engineers will test prototypes… in a similar way to some of the hardware that will fly on Haven Demo and Haven-1 – a testament to the authenticity of IWC’s aerospace lineage.”