Kenyan-American startup Satlyt has raised $8 million in Seed funding to develop software that turns satellites into virtual artificial intelligence data centers, allowing spacecraft to process data and run AI applications in orbit rather than sending raw information back to Earth.
The round was led by non sibi ventures and included participation from TLCOM, Antler, Slauson & Co., Launch Africa Ventures, Enza Capital, Askya Investment Partners, Demos, BAG Collective, Gaingels and Axian Investment, among other investors. Existing backers also participated in the round.
Satlyt said the new capital will be used to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and customer delivery teams, and support deployments across more spacecraft and customers.
The company, which is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, has its Africa headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, where it maintains a substantial engineering presence.
Processing data in space
Satellites generate large volumes of imagery, measurements and operational data, but much of that information traditionally has to be transmitted to ground stations for processing. Limited communications capacity can delay access to data and increase the amount of information that spacecraft need to send back to Earth.
Satlyt’s software is designed to move more of that computing onto the spacecraft.
By processing imagery, measurements and system logs onboard, the company says satellite operators can reduce communications requirements and obtain useful results sooner.
The platform also allows application developers to deploy software directly onto spacecraft, effectively making computing resources already in orbit available for additional applications.
Satlyt said its software is already operating in space through earlier deployments. A Google DeepMind case study has documented the deployment of a Gemma AI model onboard a satellite to analyze system logs, software errors and stack traces locally.
“Running applications on existing spacecraft gives operators a way to do more with the computing hardware they already have in orbit,” said Rama Afullo, Satlyt’s founder and chief executive. “Our job is to make those applications practical to deploy and operate.”
The latest financing, he said, will allow Satlyt to expand the engineering and delivery teams needed to support more spacecraft and customers while working toward computing resources that can operate across multiple missions.
From individual satellites to a space computing network
Satlyt is also working on deployments that combine research and commercial applications on the same spacecraft.
The company said one planned deployment will support research software developed through its NASA Glenn Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) work with the University of Houston, alongside an imagery-processing application supplied by a commercial software company.
Satlyt will provide the software deployment and operating layer, while the host provider supplies the spacecraft and computing platform and the commercial software company provides its application.
The company cautioned that launching the spacecraft and successfully executing the applications in orbit are separate milestones, with performance results to be assessed after the applications run in space.
Satlyt’s current technology focuses on processing within individual spacecraft. Its longer-term ambition is to coordinate computing resources across spacecraft operated by different companies, creating what it describes as virtual AI data centers in space.
“We see a vast opportunity for software to make spacecraft computing more useful to operators and application developers,” said Kent Lucas, managing partner at non sibi ventures, which led the funding round.
Lucas said Satlyt’s existing onboard deployments and planned support for commercial and research applications provide a foundation for building a broader computing platform in space.
Building from Nairobi and the US
Satlyt’s dual presence in the US and Africa is central to its development strategy.
The company said its leadership team is entirely Kenyan-American, with a substantial engineering team based in Nairobi and additional employees elsewhere on the African continent.
Its Kenyan subsidiary has also signed memoranda of understanding with the Kenya Space Agency and Angola’s GGPEN, strengthening its relationships with African space institutions.
Satlyt is positioning the Nairobi operation as part of a broader effort to build space-computing infrastructure using engineering talent and capital from both Africa and the US.
The company’s approach reflects a broader shift in the space industry toward processing data closer to where it is generated. As satellites become more capable and carry increasingly powerful computing hardware, companies are looking to use those resources for AI inference, imagery analysis, spacecraft operations and other applications without relying entirely on ground-based infrastructure.
