Satlyt, founded by a former Google and SpaceX product manager, raises $8M to run AI on satellites
techcrunch ·
Satlyt, a startup founded by former Google and SpaceX product manager Rama Afullo, has secured an $8 million seed round to develop software for running AI models on satellites. Rather than building its own spacecraft, Satlyt aims to create an open ecosystem similar to Android, allowing its software to operate across various companies' existing satellites. The company recently demonstrated efficiency gains by deploying Google DeepMind’s Gemma model on a Momentus satellite, which reduced transmission sizes for error reports by over 60%. This week, Satlyt’s software will launch on a TakeMe2Space satellite serving customers including NASA and Stellerian to test cloud computing protocols and image processing. Investors like Non Sibi Ventures support the venture because it relies on the growing number of satellites rather than uncertain large-scale orbital data centers. Afullo hopes to have his software live on 20% of satellites by the end of the decade as hardware capabilities improve. The company plans to eventually demonstrate shared computing systems spanning multiple satellites to offer true in-orbit compute clouds.
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