Satlyt, a startup co-founded by a former Google and SpaceX product manager, has raised an $8 million seed round to build software that runs artificial intelligence models on satellites. The Kenyan American engineer, Afullo, worked in Google's cloud computing business before a brief stint at SpaceX's Starlink communications network in 2024. He told TechCrunch that he pitched the concept internally at both companies and was turned down each time, which led him to leave SpaceX and start Satlyt. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and Nairobi.
Satlyt does not plan to build its own spacecraft. Instead, the team is developing software that operates AI models on satellites, an approach Afullo compared to VMWare and Snowflake, whose platforms let users run complex software without managing the underlying infrastructure. Afullo said that if companies like SpaceX building orbital data centers are the iPhone, Satlyt intends to build Android as a horizontally integrated, open ecosystem. The goal is software that works across satellites owned by many different companies and lets many satellites share the work of large computing jobs in space.
The company has already flown its software on two demonstration missions, with an initial focus on operational efficiencies for spacecraft. Satellites typically rely on flight controllers on the ground to resolve problems, and sending data back to Earth, known as downlink, is expensive and often slow. Using AI to make decisions onboard can produce real savings, whether by resolving anomalies or processing sensor readings on the spacecraft rather than on the ground. Earlier this year, Satlyt deployed Google DeepMind's Gemma AI model onboard a spacecraft operated by Momentus, and the model cut the size of a transmission about onboard software errors by more than 60 percent, an efficiency Afullo said can save hundreds of thousands of dollars per satellite each year.
This week's launch will put Satlyt's software to work onboard a spacecraft built by TakeMe2Space, an Indian startup that builds computing hardware for satellites. The mission involves three customers: NASA, which is paying the company to test protocols for cloud computing in space; Stellerian, a startup focused on space surveillance and tracking objects in orbit, which wants to test image processing workloads; and TakeMe2Space itself, to show the satellite can host other companies' software. The launch is set to fly on a SpaceX rocket alongside the first prototype for Google's space data center effort, Project Suncatcher. SpaceX has since gone all-in on orbital data centers.
Few high-powered GPUs are in orbit today, and the most likely opportunity for now lies in the kinds of workloads Satlyt is working on. The company's next project is to demonstrate a shared computing system, a cloud, spanning two different satellites, which it expects to attempt next year. If successful, that would let Satlyt build a true compute cloud in orbit as a third-party provider to spacecraft builders. Afullo described the approach as turning a customer's satellite into a revenue-generating managed service.
The seed round was led by Houston-based Non Sibi Ventures, where partner Bernard Harris, who served as a NASA astronaut for more than 20 years, helped ground the firm's conviction in a novel, space-based business. Non Sibi partner Kent Lucas told TechCrunch that one reason the firm invested was that Satlyt does not depend on the highest-octane vision of space data centers, which faces uncertain economics and a launch bottleneck. Lucas said Satlyt does not need data centers in space to be wildly successful, and that it can be driven by the number of satellites going up. Afullo said his hope is to be live on 20 percent of satellites by the end of the decade, when he expects virtually every spacecraft builder to be putting GPUs and similar advanced processors in their satellites.
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