Kenyan-American startup Satlyt has raised $8 million in Seed funding to develop software that enables satellites to process data and run AI applications in orbit. The funding round was led by non sibi ventures and included participation from various investors, including TLCOM, Antler, and Enza Capital. This new capital will be used to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and customer delivery teams, and support deployments across more spacecraft and customers.
Satlyt's software is designed to move computing onto spacecraft, allowing satellite operators to reduce communications requirements and obtain useful results sooner. The platform enables application developers to deploy software directly onto spacecraft, making computing resources already in orbit available for additional applications. Satlyt's software is already operating in space through earlier deployments, including a Google DeepMind case study that documented the deployment of a Gemma AI model onboard a satellite.
The company's founder and chief executive, Rama Afullo, stated that running applications on existing spacecraft gives operators a way to do more with the computing hardware they already have in orbit. The latest financing will allow Satlyt to expand its engineering and delivery teams to support more spacecraft and customers while working toward computing resources that can operate across multiple missions.
Satlyt is working on deployments that combine research and commercial applications on the same spacecraft. One planned deployment will support research software developed through its NASA Glenn Small Business Technology Transfer work with the University of Houston, alongside an imagery-processing application supplied by a commercial software company.
Satlyt's current technology focuses on processing within individual spacecraft, but its longer-term ambition is to coordinate computing resources across spacecraft operated by different companies, creating virtual AI data centers in space. The company's approach reflects a broader shift in the space industry toward processing data closer to where it is generated.
Satlyt's dual presence in the US and Africa is central to its development strategy, with a substantial engineering team based in Nairobi and additional employees elsewhere on the African continent. The company's Kenyan subsidiary has signed memoranda of understanding with the Kenya Space Agency and Angola's GGPEN, strengthening its relationships with African space institutions.
The company's leadership team is entirely Kenyan-American, and it is positioning its Nairobi operation as part of a broader effort to build space-computing infrastructure using engineering talent and capital from both Africa and the US. This approach is expected to support the development of a broader computing platform in space.
Key points
- Satlyt has secured $8 million in funding to develop software for turning satellites into virtual AI data centers.
- The company's software enables satellites to process data and run AI applications in orbit, reducing communications requirements and obtaining useful results sooner.
- Satlyt's dual presence in the US and Africa is central to its development strategy, with a substantial engineering team based in Nairobi.
