Data centres are the infrastructure that stores and processes the digital information used by cloud applications and artificial intelligence. They are usually built on land and packed with servers that need electricity and fibre connections to keep data moving. Satlyt, a space-tech startup with its African headquarters in Nairobi, is betting that some of that computing can happen in space.
The startup builds software to let satellites process data and run artificial intelligence (AI) applications on the computers already inside the spacecraft. Its longer-term plan is to connect computing resources across different satellites and turn them into what it calls virtual AI data centres.
Satlyt has raised $8 million in seed funding to build towards that vision. non sibi ventures, a Houston-headquartered early-stage venture capital firm, led the round, with participation from TLCOM, Antler, Slauson & Co., Launch Africa Ventures, Enza Capital, Askya Investment Partners, Demos, BAG Collective, Gaingels, Axian Investment and other investors.
The company will use the funding to expand its engineering and customer delivery teams and deploy its software across more spacecraft operated by other companies.
Africa holds less than 1% of global data centre capacity, with 360 megawatts of active capacity. The Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) estimates African countries will need to more than double their hosting capacity by 2030 to meet growing digital demands and support AI training and deployment.
Market estimates put the average cost of building a data centre in Africa at about $10 million per megawatt, rising to roughly $15 million in markets such as Nigeria. Satlyt believes that rather than build another data centre, it wants to make the computing hardware already in orbit do more work.
“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.”
Satellites need computers onboard to handle basic functions such as controlling their systems and managing the data they collect. Founded in 2024 by Afullo, a Kenyan-American entrepreneur, Satlyt’s software allows some of that computing capacity to be used for other applications, including AI and data processing.
According to the company, its software is designed to work across different satellite designs and can be uplinked, retrofitted, or preloaded onto a satellite. A satellite operator already owns the spacecraft and the computing hardware inside it. Satlyt provides the software that can be installed on that hardware and used to run additional applications.
In effect, the satellite can run apps. A software company that wants its code to run in orbit can ride on a satellite someone else already flies, just like a company can run software on rented cloud servers instead of building its own data centre.
“We don’t want satellites to be isolated computers collecting data and sending everything back to them,” Afullo said in an interview with TechCabal. “We want spacecraft to run AI, process data onboard, make decisions locally, and eventually coordinate a computer across spacecraft.”
Satlyt says it already has software operating in orbit and has worked with NASA and Google. An earlier deployment involved Google’s Gemma AI model running on a satellite, where it analysed the spacecraft’s system logs and identified software errors and stack traces without first sending the data to Earth.
Under NASA’s Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programme, which pays small companies to develop technology with a university partner, Satlyt is working with the University of Houston through NASA’s Glenn Research Centre to work on delay-tolerant networking technology. The work focuses on allowing spacecraft systems to communicate and exchange data despite the delays and interruptions common in space.
Satlyt’s long-term goal is getting spacecraft from different operators to contribute computing to a shared network.
“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. “Satlyt is addressing that opportunity through deployments on third-party platforms. Its existing onboard work and planned support for commercial and research applications give the team a concrete foundation for pursuing a broader computing platform in space.”
Afullo described Satlyt’s different revenue streamsHe explained that satellite operators pay the company to install its software on their spacecraft and help them use their existing computing capacity more efficiently. The company is also running paid pilots with large aerospace and defence contractors, while space agencies pay to develop specific technologies through research and development programmes.
Although Satlyt is not building the computing hardware, it operates alongside a growing group of companies exploring space-based computing, including Starcloud, a United States-based company, and Axiom Space, which builds space infrastructure.
Satlyt’s African ties are partly commercial. It has signed memoranda of understanding with Kenya Space Agency and Angola’s Gabinete de Gestão do Programa Espacial Nacional (GGPEN). Space in Africa values the continent’s space economy at $24.95 billion and projects it to hit $39.52 billion by 2030.
Afullo argues that Africa should help set the standards, not just buy the data. He noted that Satlyt wants a hand in the infrastructure because it matters for how the continent approaches data sovereignty.
“If Africa does not have a significant foothold in the space industry, we will be at odds with the rest of the world, and we will always be looking for other folks to provide us our data,” he said.
Instead of trying to own every satellite, Satlyt wants African engineers and companies to build part of the software infrastructure that makes those satellites useful. Afullo said Satlyt’s focus for now is making satellites more efficient by doing more computing onboard.
“We are not trying to offset data centres right now. The goal is edge compute for satellite systems,” he said.
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