The Pitch That Two Tech Giants Rejected โ Now It's Launching on a SpaceX Rocket
By Rama Afullo's account, he saw orbital data centers coming long before the industry caught on. The Kenyan American engineer spent time in Google's cloud computing division before a brief 2024 stint at SpaceX's Starlink communications network โ and both experiences convinced him 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 company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and Nairobi, Kenya. Satlyt builds software for satellites that Afullo hopes will allow many spacecraft to share the workload of large computing jobs in orbit. The company has raised an $8 million seed round, Afullo exclusively told TechCrunch.
The timing appears to be on his side. SpaceX has since gone all-in on orbital data centers, and Satlyt's software is set to launch Thursday on a SpaceX rocket โ alongside the first prototype for Google's space data center initiative, Project Suncatcher.
The "Android of Orbital Data Centers"
Unlike SpaceX, Google, or startups such as Starcloud and Cowboy Space Company, Satlyt isn't planning to build its own spacecraft. Afullo's team is building software to operate AI models on satellites, an approach he compares to VMware and Snowflake โ platforms that let users run complex software without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
"The folks like SpaceX who are doing orbital data centers โ if they are the iPhone, we'll build Android as a horizontally integrated, open ecosystem," he said.
In other words, Satlyt wants to offer software that works across many companies' satellites, positioning itself as a neutral layer in an increasingly crowded orbital computing market.
Proven in Orbit, Scaling for 2026
Satlyt has already flown its software on two demonstration missions. The initial focus is operational efficiency: spacecraft are typically dependent on flight controllers on the ground to solve any problems that arise. Sending data back to Earth โ known as downlink โ is expensive and often slow, so using AI to make decisions onboard can deliver real savings, whether by resolving anomalies or by processing sensor readings in space instead of on the ground.
Earlier this year, Satlyt deployed Google DeepMind's Gemma AI model onboard a spacecraft operated by Momentus. The model cut the size of a transmission about onboard software errors by more than 60% โ efficiency gains that Afullo says can save hundreds of thousands of dollars per satellite each year.
This week's launch puts 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 โ paying the company to test protocols for cloud computing in space
- Stellerian โ a startup focused on space surveillance (tracking objects in orbit) that wants to test image-processing workloads
- TakeMe2Space โ demonstrating that the satellite can host other companies' software
Toward a True Orbital Cloud
Right now, few high-powered GPUs are in orbit. For the near term, the most likely opportunity lies in the kinds of workloads Satlyt is already tackling. But the company's next project is more ambitious: demonstrating a shared computing system โ a cloud โ spanning two different satellites, which it expects to attempt in 2026. If successful, it would allow Satlyt to build a true compute cloud in orbit as a third-party provider to spacecraft builders.
"The way to think about it is that we turn your satellite into a revenue-generating managed service," Afullo said.
Backed by Space Credibility
Satlyt's seed round was led by Houston-based Non Sibi Ventures, where partner Bernard Harris โ a NASA astronaut for more than 20 years โ helped ground the firm's conviction in a novel approach to orbital computing.
As orbital data centers move from concept to deployment in 2026, Satlyt's bet is that the winning model won't be vertical integration, but an open software layer that any satellite operator can plug into โ the Android to SpaceX's iPhone.
via TechCrunch AI