Satlyt raises $8M seed to run AI models on satellites
Satlyt, co-founded by former Google and SpaceX product manager Rama Afullo, has raised an $8 million seed round led by Houston-based Non Sibi Ventures. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and Nairobi, the company builds software for running AI models on satellites rather than its own spacecraft, aiming to be a horizontally integrated layer across many operators' hardware. It previously deployed Google DeepMind's Gemma model on a Momentus-operated spacecraft, which the company says cut the size of a transmission about onboard software errors by more than 60%. This week its software launches on a SpaceX rocket aboard a satellite built by Indian startup TakeMe2Space, serving NASA and space-surveillance startup Stellerian, and Satlyt plans next year to attempt a shared compute system spanning two satellites.
With orbital data centers facing uncertain economics and launch constraints, on-satellite AI inference plus a cross-vendor software layer is a more pragmatic near-term path.
The way Rama Afullo tells it, he saw orbital data centers coming.
The Kenyan American engineer previously worked in Google’s cloud computing business before a brief stint at SpaceX’s Starlink communications network in 2024. His experiences convinced him that there was untapped potential for computers in space.
“When I was at SpaceX, I tried to pitch this internally. They said no. When I was at Google, I tried to pitch this internally. They said no,” he tells TechCrunch.
So he left SpaceX and co-founded Satlyt, a new company with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, and Nairobi, to build software for satellites that he hopes will let many satellites share the work of large computing jobs in space. The company has raised an $8 million seed round, Afullo exclusively told TechCrunch.
The timing looks good for him. SpaceX has since gone all-in on orbital data centers, and Satlyt’s software is set to launch Thursday on a SpaceX rocket alongside the first prototype for Google’s space data center effort, Project Suncatcher.
Unlike SpaceX, Google, or startups like Starcloud and Cowboy Space Company, Satlyt isn’t planning to build its own spacecraft. Afullo’s team is building the software to operate AI models on satellites, comparing his approach to VMware and Snowflake — companies whose platforms let users run complex software without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
#Satlyt#Rama Afullo#Non Sibi Ventures#Google DeepMind#Gemma#SpaceX#TakeMe2Space#NASA#Stellerian#Momentus#Project Suncatcher