This billionaire's startup wanted to build a space station. Now it can barely pay its bills

Billionaire Kam Ghaffarian founded Axiom Space to build private space stations that allow humans to live and work off-planet en masse.

The Houston -based startup is struggling to raise money to fund a smaller, less commercially lucrative station, former employees tell Forbes .

The company is facing a severe cash crunch, business challenges and a cold reception to its latest fundraising efforts have hamstrung Axiom .

The high valuation awarded Axiom by investors now seems a curse, according to a space industry executive.

Ghaffarian and Suffredini founded the company on the belief that advances in technology and cheaper launch costs would enable building a private space station for a fraction of the price of the $150 billion ISS.

They aimed to make an ISS replacement for just $3 billion .

Ex-employees say Axiom struggled to sell seats and collect payment, but it was an endless struggle for Axiom to cover its bills.

Chief Revenue Officer Tejpaul Bhatia told his staff to call customers daily after they’d been invoiced to get them to pay up earlier than the 30 to 60 days their contracts allowed, they said.

The company is now years behind schedule on building the space station in the first place.

The ISS is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2030 and then pushed into Earth ’s atmosphere to burn up.