In order to develop a real-time connectivity network for satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), Apolink, a space-tech business funded by Y Combinator and started by a 19-year-old Indian entrepreneur, has secured $4.3 million in a “oversubscribed” seed round at a $45 million post-money value.
The business is working to solve an issue that recurs in space communications. Dead zones, or times when a satellite is out of a ground station’s line of sight, are the reason why satellites frequently go down during certain zones of their orbit. Global ground station networks and relay satellites aid in reducing this downtime, but they are only partial fixes.
As the space industry develops, that gap has become increasingly important. To keep in close contact with satellites in geostationary orbit, NASA used its Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system for many years.
However, the agency declared in 2022 that it would gradually phase out TDRS and switch to satellite communications from commercial vendors. The majority of these commercial systems continue to concentrate on medium or geostationary Earth orbits. With each orbital ring built to support 256 users at 9.6kbps, Apolink, originally known as Bifrost Orbital, seeks to change that by offering connectivity to LEO satellites around-the-clock.
In an exclusive interview, Apolink founder Onkar Singh Batra stated, “LEO has its own advantages.” Since it’s a lot closer than geostationary orbit, it will be much simpler to cut off communication between the customer satellite and our constellation. This is where limiting the power requirements is necessary, and compatibility also plays a role.
Batra’s early identification of this connectivity issue is the basis for Apolink’s approach. He became interested in space when he was 14 years old in 2020. He developed the InQube satellite system, India’s first open source satellite, in 2022 while he was a 12th grader at a defense school in the northern Indian city of Jammu. in 2022–2023, he also served as a guest professor at IIT Jammu, where he instructed engineering students on space ecosystems.
During the development of his initial satellite system, Batra became aware of the issue of satellite communication and observed that current solutions lacked backward compatibility, necessitating specialized gear to facilitate network access while in orbit.
Batra claims that the problem still exists since all other inter-satellite linkages (ISLs) are not compatible and interoperability and do not meet the standards set by the Space Development Agency.
“Our hybrid-RF optical architecture and no user terminal, hardware-independent approach solve this,” he said.
By constructing new ground stations, some startups have attempted to alleviate gloomy zones. Ground stations, however, are “very cumbersome to work with and can’t guarantee a 24/7 link,” according to Batra.
“A dependable continuous link to the ground during the window is the maximum you can afford,” he stated.
The Palo Alto-based business, which was founded in 2024, intends to address the issue by deploying a constellation of 32 spacecraft equipped with radios and lasers to allow connectivity even for satellites without specialized technology.
Apolink, which stands for Apogee-plus-link, promises a latency of 10–15 seconds and an uptime of over 99%. After the network is established, the latency will be further decreased to two to three seconds.
To solve satellite customers’ communication problems, businesses are also constructing intersatellite links, such as SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper. But according to Batra, the majority of players with multipurpose constellations do not dedicate them to virtual relays, which leaves clients with a restricted amount of bandwidth. For connectivity, they also demand that clients have an optical terminal set up on their property.
“We don’t use optical terminals for EO image downlink, while other ISL players concentrate on Ku/Ka-band,” he told TechCrunch.
Customers no longer need to meet extra licensing requirements because the firm has its own FCC license. In order to make sure that satellite components, like radios and lasers, work with its algorithms, it also manufactures them internally.
Apolink plans to use a SpaceX rideshare to launch its first demonstration mission in Q2 2026. According to Batra, the mission will include LinkONE/IPoS, a 3U technology demonstration satellite intended to verify the backward-compatible radio-frequency relay in low Earth orbit.
A second demonstration with two satellites is scheduled to take place in June 2027. The enterprise plans to launch its commercial constellation in 2028, with the full 32-satellites set to follow in 2029.
Even though the startup is still in its beginnings, it has already received letters of intent totalling over $140 million from businesses in the communication, Earth observation, and spatial data industries, such as Hubble Network, Star Catcher Industries, and Astro Digital.
A number of angel investors, including Laura Crabtree (CEO of Epsilon3), Benjamin Bryant (co-founder of Pebble Tech), and Kanav Kariya (president of Jump Crypto), supported its last seed round, along with Y Combinator, 468 Capital, Unshackled Ventures, Rebel Fund, and Maiora Ventures.
In a 4,000-square-foot research and development centre, Apolink works with a core team of four people, each with over five years of industry experience and from firms including Maxar, Audacy, and Astra. To validate its system in orbit, the business is collaborating with early partners while concentrating on spacecraft integration and testing.
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