Satlyt, founded by ex-google and spacex executive, secures $8m to run AI on satellites

Satlyt, a company co-founded by Rama Afullo, a former Google and SpaceX product manager, has raised $8 million in seed funding to develop software that enables AI processing on satellites. Afullo, who previously worked at Google’s cloud computing division and SpaceX’s Starlink network, left both companies after pitching the idea of orbital data centers, which were rejected internally. Satlyt’s software is set to launch this week on a SpaceX rocket, alongside Google’s Project Suncatcher, a space data center initiative. The company plans to offer an open ecosystem for satellite AI, similar to VMware and Snowflake, allowing users to run complex software without managing the underlying infrastructure. Afullo aims to have its software operational on 20% of satellites by the end of the decade, as more spacecraft incorporate GPUs. The seed round was led by Non Sibi Ventures, which saw potential in Satlyt’s approach, avoiding the high costs of orbital data centers by focusing on satellite-based computing.