Satlyt

What Satlyt is building

Satlyt doesn't build spacecraft. It writes the software layer that lets AI models run on other companies' satellites, so an operator can process imagery and telemetry in orbit and downlink the answer instead of the raw data. Rama Afullo compares it to VMware and Snowflake: a virtualization and data-routing layer across hardware Satlyt doesn't own. Applications can be uplinked to satellites already flying, retrofitted, or preloaded before launch. It has already flown twice. Earlier this year Satlyt ran Google DeepMind's Gemma onboard a Momentus spacecraft. The system processed imagery, produced an encrypted downlink-ready output and diagnosed injected software faults, and it cut the size of one fault-report transmission by more than 60%. The next mission flies on a TakeMe2Space spacecraft on SpaceX's Transporter-18. It carries applications for NASA (cloud-computing protocols from a $4M NASA Glenn STTR with the University of Houston), for the space-surveillance startup Stellerian, and for TakeMe2Space itself. The longer game is a shared compute cloud spanning several satellites, with a two-satellite attempt planned for next year. Afullo's framing: 'The folks like SpaceX who are doing orbital data centers — if they are the iPhone, we'll build Android as a horizontally integrated, open ecosystem.' Operators pay for installs, defense and aerospace primes run paid pilots, and agency R&D programs fund the protocol work.

Why this matters

The bottleneck for most satellites isn't the sensor, it's the downlink. Ground-station time is scarce and expensive, so every byte you don't have to send is money saved. Afullo says onboard compression and triage is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per satellite per year. Meanwhile, vertically integrated players like SpaceX and Google (whose first Project Suncatcher prototype shares Satlyt's launch) are building their own orbital compute stacks. That leaves thousands of non-Starlink operators without a software layer of their own, and Satlyt is aiming to be it, with a stated goal of running on 20% of satellites by the end of the decade. There's also an Africa angle: TechCabal notes Africa holds under 1% of global data-center capacity, and Satlyt already has MoUs with the Kenya Space Agency and Angola's GGPEN.

Investors: Non Sibi Ventures (Kent Lucas, Bernard Harris), TLCOM, Antler, Slauson & Co., Launch Africa Ventures, Enza Capital, Demos Capital, BAG Collective, Gaingels, Askya Investment Partners, AXIAN Investment