Satlyt, founded by a former Google and SpaceX product manager, raises $8M to run AI on satellites

Satlyt, a company building software for running AI models on satellites, has raised an $8 million seed round, founder Rama Afullo told TechCrunch. The round was led by Houston-based Non Sibi Ventures, where partner Bernard Harris, a former NASA astronaut, helped ground the firm's conviction in the business.

Afullo, a Kenyan American engineer, previously worked in Google's cloud computing business and had a brief stint at SpaceX's Starlink network in 2024. He said he pitched the idea internally at both companies and was turned down, then left SpaceX to co-found Satlyt. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and Nairobi.

Satlyt does not plan to build its own spacecraft. Afullo described the approach by comparison to VMWare and Snowflake, saying the software lets users run complex software without managing underlying infrastructure. He contrasted the company with SpaceX's orbital data centers, saying that if those are the iPhone, Satlyt aims to build Android as a horizontally integrated, open ecosystem whose software works across many companies' satellites.

Satlyt has flown its software on two demonstration missions. In one, it 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%. Afullo said such efficiency can save hundreds of thousands of dollars per satellite each year.

A launch on Thursday, on a SpaceX rocket, will put Satlyt's software onboard a spacecraft built by Indian startup TakeMe2Space, alongside the first prototype for Google's Project Suncatcher space data center effort. The mission involves three customers: NASA, which is paying to test protocols for cloud computing in space; Stellerian, a space surveillance startup that wants to test image processing workloads; and TakeMe2Space itself, to show the satellite can host other companies' software.

Satlyt's next project is to demonstrate a shared computing system spanning two different satellites, which it expects to attempt next year. Afullo said he hopes to be live on 20% of satellites by the end of the decade.