TL;DR: Exosat is building a sovereign alternative to Starlink with thousands of low-cost satellites. We’ve booked our first launch next April and signed hundreds of millions in LOIs with customers across six nations. We’re looking to connect with operators interested in sovereign networks and AI infrastructure. Email us: founders@exosat.com

Exosat is building thousands of low-cost communication satellites to provide a neutral, sovereign alternative to Starlink. 

We launch our first satellite next April, have signed $400M in LOIs with customers across 6 nations, and hold an ITU filing for 11,000 satellites to build the largest comms network outside of the United States and China.

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⏰ Problem

Nations and enterprises are wary about depending on Starlink.

These concerns aren’t without merit. In 2022, Starlink access was suddenly cut to stop a Ukrainian counteroffensive. As a result, nations have realized that a foreign superpower owning your satellites makes you ultimately dependent on their continued permission to access it.

In Europe, telecoms are warning about the danger of relying on foreign-owned AI and satellite infrastructure:

In Indonesia, telecoms are lobbying for a Starlink ban:

In India, Starlink rollout has been delayed due to security concerns:

And even nations like Canada are moving off of dependence on American space infrastructure:

But even if they don’t trust Starlink, that doesn’t mean they necessarily trust constellations like Qianfan or Guowang that are owned and operated by Chinese state enterprises.

However, other alternatives outside of the U.S. and China face years of delay or need millions of dollars just to build a single satellite, which leaves hundreds of millions people still without reliable connectivity. 

🛰️ Our Solution

Exosat fixes this problem by building thousands of satellites at a tenth of the usual cost.

We focus entirely on civil and commercial customers outside of the United States or China and fly our satellites in lower orbits versus incumbents like AST and Iridium, enabling us to take advantage of better link budgets, faster latency, and a milder radiation environment.

These factors let us use global manufacturing hubs or local partners to build our satellites using automotive-grade parts and zero ITAR/EAR-controlled supply chains, enabling us to seamlessly launch from other nations to bypass capacity bottlenecks and access equatorial orbits.

As a result, we can deploy a communications satellite with a 3-5 year lifespan for ~$300k instead of $5M and in days instead of months, enabling us to manufacture and deploy a mega-constellation at near cost-parity to Starlink.

Our thesis is simple: we’re building a satellite at <10% of the cost to dominate 80% of the market instead of going after everyone.

👋 About Us

I’m a second-time space founder who previously built Aethero, a company developing satellite edge computers. We scaled to millions of dollars in revenue from defense primes like Blue Origin and Booz Allen Hamilton, won multiple SBIR awards, launched two satellites to orbit, and did radiation research on GPUs with the Aerospace Corporation and AFRL.

I started Exosat and moved to Singapore because I think a future where SpaceX and China monopolize the space economy is a bleak one. I’m willing to go for broke, and put down the deposit for our first launch slot next year with my own money.

📈 What have we done?

Since starting out this summer, we’ve:

• Booked our first launch for next April, with early pilots underway to start initial commercial service for satellite IoT no later than the end of 2028.
• Added $400M+ in LOIs from early customers across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia to either lease future network capacity from our dedicated constellation or build and launch their own sovereign networks with our satellites.
• Published ITU filings to build an 11,000 satellite constellation to build the biggest satellite network outside of the United States and China.

🙏 Our Ask

If any of these describe you or your organization, we'd love to talk:

• Network operators interested in space-based capacity
• National space agencies interested in sovereign space capabilities
• Industrial users in maritime, energy, mining, logistics, who rely on satellites for tasks such as AIS or remote connectivity
• OEMs producing satellite-connected devices and gateways

👉 Reach us at info@exosat.com

Fun fact: We’re the first YC space company to be based in Asia.