Space-tech startup Satlyt has raised $8 million in seed funding. The startup builds software that lets satellites process data and run AI onboard. It has joint headquarters in Nairobi and Sunnyvale, California.
The round was led by non sibi ventures with participation from TLCOM, Antler, Launch Africa Ventures, Enza Capital, Axian Investment, and Askya Investment Partners. Slauson & Co. and Gaingels also participated.
Founded in 2024 by former Google and SpaceX product manager Rama Afullo. The startup does not build spacecraft. It writes software for hardware others already operate. Its latest software iteration is launching aboard a SpaceX rocket via the Indian space startup TakeMe2Space.
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“Running applications on existing spacecraft gives operators a way to do more with the computing hardware they already have in orbit,” Rama Afullo, Satlyt’s founder and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
“Our job is to make those applications practical to deploy and operate. This financing lets us expand the engineering and delivery teams needed to support more spacecraft and customers while building toward computing resources that can work together across missions.”
The new funding will speed up work on its virtual AI data centres in space. It will also grow Satlyt’s engineering and customer teams.
Its pitch is that satellites send less raw data to Earth. Operators get useful information faster.
In September 2026, it successfully deployed Google DeepMind’s Gemma AI model onboard a Momentus spacecraft. The software processed telemetry and data in orbit, shrinking a critical transmission about system errors by over 60% (and reducing telemetry data by up to 97%), proving that processing data at the “space edge” saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in transmission costs.
Two years in, Satlyt’s work today focuses on computing inside single satellites. Its long-term goal is a common software layer across fleets run by different organisations.
Last updated: October 2, 2026
