Satlyt, a company building software that enables satellites to process data and run AI onboard, has secured $8 million in seed financing led by US-based Non Sibi Ventures. The funding will accelerate development of Satlyt’s virtual AI data centres in space, expand its engineering and customer delivery teams, and scale software deployments across spacecraft operated by other companies.
The funding round includes investors such as TLCOM, Antler, Slauson & Co., Launch Africa Ventures, Enza Capital, Askya Investment Partners, Demos, BAG Collective, Gaingels, Axian Investment, and others, with existing backers also making follow-on investments.
Satlyt’s American headquarters is in Sunnyvale, and its Africa headquarters is in Nairobi, Kenya. Its leadership team is entirely Kenyan-American, with a substantial engineering presence in Nairobi and team members elsewhere on the African continent.
Satellites collect images and measurements, but operators often need to send that data back to Earth before they can use it. Limited communications capacity can leave valuable information waiting for a connection. Satlyt moves more processing onto the spacecraft itself, reducing the need to send every raw image or system log to Earth for analysis. That can reduce communications demands and the wait for useful results.
Satlyt’s approach is to make computing hardware on existing spacecraft more useful through software. Operators can process data closer to where it is collected, while application developers gain a way to run their software in orbit. Over time, Satlyt aims to provide spacecraft from different operators with a shared software layer to coordinate computing resources.
Its Kenyan subsidiary, along with signed memoranda of understanding with the Kenya Space Agency and Angola’s GGPEN, establishes an operating connection to Africa.
“Running applications on existing spacecraft gives operators a way to do more with the computing hardware they already have in orbit,” said Rama Afullo, founder and CEO of Satlyt. “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.”
“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.”
“We look forward to helping the team build its commercial function and deepen partnerships with space agencies in Africa and beyond,” commented Maurizio Caio, managing partner at TLCOM.
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