Ex-Google, SpaceX PM raises $8M for satellite AI — SkimNews
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- Satlyt raised an $8 million seed round led by Houston-based Non Sibi Ventures, where partner and former NASA astronaut Bernard Harris helped ground the firm's conviction in the space-based business
- Rama Afullo co-founded Satlyt after pitching orbital data centers internally at both Google and SpaceX, where he says he was told no at each company
- Satlyt's software is set to launch Thursday on a SpaceX rocket aboard a TakeMe2Space-built spacecraft, flying alongside the first prototype for Google's Project Suncatcher orbital data center
- Unlike SpaceX, Google, or rivals like Starcloud, Satlyt is not building its own spacecraft — Afullo compares the approach to "Android" versus SpaceX's "iPhone," offering software that works across many operators' satellites
- Earlier this year, Satlyt deployed Google DeepMind's Gemma AI model onboard a Momentus-operated spacecraft, cutting the size of transmissions about onboard software errors by more than 60%
- Afullo's target is to be live on 20% of all satellites by the end of the decade, with the company planning to demonstrate a shared computing system spanning two satellites next year
Why it matters: Satlyt's $8M bet doesn't require orbital data center economics to work — its investor thesis is that the sheer volume of satellites going to space creates demand for on-board AI regardless of whether any single company's space-computing moonshot succeeds. The Momentus demo showed 60%+ transmission-size reductions, translating to hundreds of thousands of dollars saved per satellite per year, giving satellite operators a concrete cost-saving case to adopt third-party AI software now.
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