Satlyt, a startup co-founded by Kenyan American engineer Rama Afullo, has raised an $8 million seed round to develop software that lets satellites run AI models and share computing workloads in orbit. The company, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and Nairobi, has already flown its software on two demonstration missions and plans to launch its platform Thursday on a SpaceX rocket aboard a spacecraft built by Indian startup TakeMe2Space. The mission includes work for NASA, Stellerian and TakeMe2Space. Satlyt’s initial applications focus on reducing the need to send data to Earth, or downlink it, by processing sensor readings and addressing spacecraft anomalies onboard. Its software reduced a transmission about onboard software errors by more than 60% during an earlier Momentus mission using Google DeepMind’s Gemma AI model. Satlyt plans to test a shared cloud spanning two satellites next year, potentially positioning it as a third-party computing provider for spacecraft builders. The company’s seed round was led by Non Sibi Ventures, which said Satlyt can grow with the number of satellites launched without relying on the uncertain economics and launch bottlenecks facing large orbital data centers.