Bradley Cheetham named EY US Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 Mountain West Award winner

WESTMINSTER, CO, 22 June 2026 – Advanced Space is pleased to share that Bradley Cheetham was named an Ernst & Young US Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 Mountain West Award winner. Bradley was selected among nearly 1,000 program participants that included 592 finalists across 17 regions competing for the title.

Now in its 41st year, the Entrepreneur Of The Year program honors business leaders for their ingenuity, courage and entrepreneurial spirit. It celebrates original founders who bootstrapped their business from inception or raised outside capital to grow their company, transformational CEOs who infused innovation into an existing organization to catapult its trajectory and multigenerational family business leaders who reimagined a legacy business model to strengthen it for the future.

Regional winners were chosen by an independent panel of past winners, top CEOs, and business leaders. Judges assessed candidates on long-term value creation, entrepreneurial spirit, purpose-driven commitment, and significant growth and impact.

As a Mountain West award winner, Bradley will now be considered by the national judges for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 National Awards, which will be presented in November at the annual Strategic Growth Forum®, where high-growth CEOs, Fortune 1000 executives, and investors converge to shape the future of business. The National Overall Award winner will move on to compete for the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Award in May 2027.

Bradley Cheetham is a three-time entrepreneur whose ventures span space, software, and robotic systems. Now in its 15th year, Advanced Space emerged at a pivotal moment for commercial space. Cheetham, together with co-founders Jeffrey Parker and the late Darrell D. Cain, knew they would not compete with the likes of SpaceX or Blue Origin by building rockets. Instead, they would build on something else: deep expertise in orbital mechanics and mission design, honed through their work on NASA missions.

They made a deliberate, contrarian bet to focus on the cislunar domain, the region of space between Earth and the Moon, while nearly every other commercial actor concentrated on geosynchronous orbit and below.

“At the time, very few people were talking about cislunar space as a place to build a business,” said Bradley Cheetham, CEO of Advanced Space. “We believed that if humanity was serious about becoming a spacefaring civilization, cislunar would be the next strategic domain. We built Advanced Space to be ready for that future.”

When NASA ultimately turned their focus to the cislunar region, Advanced Space was prepared. The company designed and led operations for CAPSTONE, NASA’s pathfinder mission to the Moon, which demonstrated operations in lunar orbit. Planned as a six-month mission, CAPSTONE far exceeded its original expectations and validates critical technologies and approaches for future lunar infrastructure.

Starting with zero employees, Advanced Space has grown to more than 110 team members, delivering mission-enabling services, technology solutions, and end-to-end mission solutions for customers operating in Earth orbit, at the Moon, at Mars, and beyond. Advanced Space’s mission “to enable the sustainable exploration, development, and settlement of space” is spoken aloud at every weekly team meeting and opens every company presentation. It is not a slogan; it is an operating principle.

“We routinely plan not just one or three years out, but ten years and even a hundred,” Cheetham said. “The goal is not growth for its own sake. The goal is for Advanced Space to still exist, still matter, and still be pushing the frontier when the first permanent human communities beyond Earth are taking shape.”

That long-term horizon is possible because Advanced Space answers to no outside investors. Free from the pressure of quarterly earnings targets, the company can take technical risks and long-duration positions that are essential for organizations working at the edge of what is possible in spaceflight.

“Purpose is our substitute for shareholder pressure, and in my experience, it’s more durable,” Cheetham added. “It keeps us focused on building capabilities that will matter over decades, not just the next reporting cycle.”

For Cheetham, this purpose is deeply personal. He carries it forward in memory of Darrell D. Cain, his best friend and co-founder, who passed away in 2012 before the company could become what they both envisioned.

“Darrell and I shared a belief that humanity’s future is in space, and that we could help make that future real,” Cheetham said. “Our vision outlasted an immeasurable loss. It drives our work every day, and this recognition is as much his as it is mine.”

Bradley has earned degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering from SUNY Buffalo and a Master’s in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he also conducted doctoral research in spacecraft navigation and taught under the direction of the late Dr. George Born.

Acknowledging the award, Bradley responded: “I thank EY for organizing this program and recognizing the power of entrepreneurship. Congratulations to the other regional winners.” Brad added: “Growing Advanced Space has been the fulfillment of a dream by a small group of friends to build an entrepreneurial space company. That dream continues to be fulfilled as we grow and add talented people to solve complex problems in space. I appreciate the honor and look forward to continuing this journey.”

Sponsors

Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards include presenting sponsors PNC Bank, Cresa, LLC, Marsh Risk, SAP and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. In Mountain West region, sponsors also include regional gold sponsors, Big Picture, Perkins Coie, Strong & Hanni Law Firm and Truss and regional silver sponsors, ADP, Pierpont Communications, and Silicon Slopes.

About Entrepreneur Of The Year

Founded in 1986, Entrepreneur Of The Year® has celebrated more than 11,000 ambitious visionaries who are leading successful, dynamic businesses in the US, and it has since expanded to nearly 60 countries and territories globally.

The US program consists of 17 regional programs whose panels of independent judges select the regional award winners every June. Those winners compete for national recognition at the Strategic Growth Forum® in November where national finalists and award winners are announced. The national overall winner represents the US at the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ competition. Visit ey.com/us/eoy.