Rama Afullo claims he anticipated the arrival of orbital data centers well before they became a trend. The Kenyan American engineer had previously worked in Google's cloud computing division and later spent a short time in 2024 at SpaceX's Starlink communications network. Those experiences led him to believe that computers in space held significant untapped potential. "When I was at SpaceX, I tried to pitch this internally. They said no. When I was at Google, I tried to pitch this internally." That rejection prompted him to leave SpaceX and co-found Satlyt, a company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and Nairobi, focused on building software for satellites that he hopes will enable many satellites to collectively handle large computing jobs in space.

The timing appears favorable for him. SpaceX has since committed fully to orbital data centers, and Satlyt's software is scheduled to launch Thursday aboard a SpaceX rocket, sharing the ride with the first prototype for Google's space data center initiative, Project Suncatcher.

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Unlike SpaceX, Google, or startups such as Starcloud and Cowboy Space Company, Satlyt has no plans to build its own spacecraft. Afullo's team is developing the software to run AI models on satellites, an approach he likens to VMWare and Snowflake—companies whose platforms allow users to run complex software without concerning themselves with the underlying infrastructure. "The folks like SpaceX who are doing orbital data centers—if they are the iPhone, we'll build Android as a horizontally integrated, open ecosystem," he said. In other words, Satlyt aims to offer software that operates across many different companies' satellites.

Satlyt has already flown its software on two demonstration missions. The initial focus is on finding operational efficiencies for spacecraft, which typically rely on flight controllers on the ground to resolve any issues that come up. Sending data back to Earth, known as downlink, is expensive and often slow, so using AI to make decisions onboard the spacecraft can deliver real savings—whether when resolving anomalies or by processing sensor readings on the spacecraft instead of on the ground. Earlier this year, Satlyt deployed Google DeepMind's Gemma AI model onboard a spacecraft operated by Momentus. The model reduced the size of a transmission about onboard software errors by more than 60%, the kind of efficiency that Afullo says can save hundreds of thousands of dollars per satellite each year.

This week's launch will put Satlyt's software to work onboard a spacecraft built by TakeMe2Space, an Indian startup that builds computing hardware for satellites. The mission involves three customers: NASA, which is paying the company to test protocols for cloud computing in space; Stellerian, a start-up focused on space surveillance (tracking objects in orbit) that wants to test image processing workloads; and TakeMe2Space itself, to show the satellite can host other companies' software.

Right now, few high-powered GPUs are in orbit. For now, the most likely opportunity lies in the kinds of workloads Satlyt is working on. But the company's next project is to show that it can create a shared computing system—a cloud-spanning two different satellites, which it expects to attempt next year. If successful, it will allow the company to build a true compute cloud in orbit as a third-party provider to spacecraft builders. "The way to think about it is that we turn your satellite into a revenue-generating managed service," Afullo said.

Satlyt's seed round was led by Houston-based Non Sibi Ventures, where partner Bernard Harris, who served as a NASA astronaut for more than 20 years, helped ground the firm's conviction in a novel, space-based business. One reason the firm invested was that Satlyt doesn't depend on highest-octane vision of space data centers, which faces uncertain economics and a launch bottleneck. "We don't need data centers in space for Rama to be wildly successful, right. It can just be driven by the number of satellites going up."

Afullo's hope is to be live on 20% of satellites by the end of the decade, when he expects virtually every spacecraft builder to be putting GPUs and similar advanced processors in their satellites. "If you're putting up a satellite without putting up a GPU on it, at the very least, you're doing yourself a disservice, right." he says.

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