SpaceX and Google said no. Now his software rides SpaceX rocket next to Google's

Rama Afullo, a former Google Cloud and SpaceX product manager, founded Satlyt to run AI and other compute workloads on satellites after both companies rejected his internal pitches. Satlyt, based in Sunnyvale and Nairobi, builds software rather than spacecraft, positioning itself as a horizontally integrated platform like VMware or Snowflake that can operate across different vendors’ satellites. The company raised an $8 million seed round led by Non Sibi Ventures and is launching its software on a SpaceX rocket alongside Google’s Project Suncatcher prototype. Satlyt’s code will run on a TakeMe2Space-built spacecraft hosting three customers: NASA (testing in-space cloud protocols), Stellerian (image-processing for space surveillance), and TakeMe2Space itself.

Satlyt has already flown demonstrations, notably deploying DeepMind’s Gemma model on a Momentus satellite to compress onboard error-report telemetry by more than 60%, translating to substantial per-satellite savings by reducing expensive downlinks and enabling onboard anomaly resolution. The near-term focus is operational efficiencies and edge processing; next year Satlyt plans to link compute across two satellites to prove a true multi-satellite cloud and become a third-party managed service for spacecraft builders. Leadership targets Satlyt software on 20% of satellites by decade’s end as GPUs proliferate in orbit, arguing the business works even without full-scale orbital data centers.