Satlyt raises $8 million to put more computing power on satellites

A satellite does not have to send every piece of data back to Earth before doing something with it. That is the problem Satlyt is trying to solve. The space-tech startup, which has its African headquarters in Nairobi, has raised $8 million in seed funding to develop software that lets satellites process data and run applications using computers already onboard.

The round was led by Houston-based venture capital firm non sibi ventures, with investment from TLCOM, Antler, Slauson & Co., Launch Africa Ventures, Enza Capital, Askya Investment Partners, Demos, BAG Collective, Gaingels, Axian Investment and others. Satlyt says the money will go towards hiring engineers and expanding its customer delivery team. It also plans to put its software on more spacecraft. The company is not building satellites or putting server racks into orbit. It is working with the computers that satellites already carry.

A computer already sitting in orbit

Every satellite needs onboard computing to keep the spacecraft running. Those computers handle things such as flight controls, sensors and the data collected by the satellite. Satlyt's software opens some of that computing capacity to other applications. That could mean processing satellite images, analysing sensor data or running an AI model before the information is sent to a ground station.

The distinction matters because satellites cannot always maintain a constant connection with Earth. Sending large amounts of raw data down can also take time.If some of the processing happens in orbit, the satellite can send back the information that is useful instead of sending everything. Satlyt says its software can be installed on different spacecraft. It can be loaded before launch or added to a satellite already in orbit.

The company says it has already deployed its software in space and has worked with NASA and Google. One demonstration used Google's Gemma AI model on a satellite to examine system logs and identify software problems. The analysis was done onboard while the spacecraft was not connected to the ground.

The data centre idea is still ahead

Satlyt's long-term pitch is more ambitious than running applications on individual satellites. The company wants computers on different spacecraft to eventually work together. In that setup, a satellite could contribute some of its spare computing capacity to a network made up of spacecraft operated by different companies. Satlyt calls the concept a virtual AI data centre.

It is worth separating that idea from what the company is doing today. “We are not trying to offset data centres right now. The goal is edge compute for satellite systems,” founder and CEO Rama Afullo told TechCabal. For now, Satlyt makes money from satellite operators that pay to install its software and use their existing computing capacity more effectively. It also runs paid pilots with aerospace and defence companies. Space agencies can pay for specific research and development work.

Africa has a separate reason to pay attention

There is another part of the story that is relevant to Africa. The continent has less than 1% of global data centre capacity, with about 360MW of active capacity. That is a problem as companies and governments start using more cloud services and AI applications. The GSMA estimates that Africa will need to more than double its hosting capacity by 2030.

Building that infrastructure is expensive. Industry estimates put the average cost of developing a data centre in Africa at about $10 million per megawatt. In markets such as Nigeria, the figure can reach roughly $15 million per megawatt. Satlyt's technology does not provide a replacement for those facilities. A satellite computer cannot run the same workload as a large terrestrial data centre.

But there are situations where processing information in orbit makes sense, particularly when the data is being collected by the satellite itself. That is where Satlyt is concentrating for now.

Nairobi is part of the company's story

Afullo founded Satlyt in 2024, and the company has built an African base in Nairobi. It has signed memoranda of understanding with the Kenya Space Agency and Angola's Gabinete de Gestão do Programa Espacial Nacional (GGPEN).

Afullo also wants African companies to have a role in the technology behind the continent's growing use of satellites. Africa already uses satellite systems for communications, agriculture, mapping, weather monitoring and other services. But much of the technology behind those services comes from companies outside the continent.

His argument is that African engineers should also be building some of the software that makes these systems work. “If Africa does not have a significant foothold in the space industry, we will be at odds with the rest of the world,” Afullo said. Satlyt is taking the software route. For now, the job is fairly specific: get satellites to process more of their own data before sending it home.

The virtual data centre idea comes later, if the company can get enough spacecraft and enough computing capacity working together.