Astranis

Company Overview

Astranis is building small, low-cost telecommunications satellites to connect the four billion people on Earth who currently do not have access to the internet. By owning and operating its satellites and offering them to customers as a turnkey solution, Astranis is able to provide bandwidth-as-a-service at a fraction of the cost of legacy providers, unlocking previously unreachable markets. It can provide internet connectivity as soon as the satellite is launched to rural areas and indigenous communities.

Astranis' Impact and Core Mission

"We’re engineers. We're entrepreneurs. We’re pilots and climbers. We speak twenty-one languages (not counting programming). We've worked at SpaceX, OneWeb, Blue Origin, Skybox, SSL, Planet Labs, Qualcomm, IDEO, Google, Apple, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Hughes, and NASA. And we've all chosen to work together to connect the world and eventually the solar system."

"We are doing our life's work at Astranis — connecting the world is one of humanity's most important challenges — and we truly care about each other as teammates. And we are proud to give incredibly talented individuals far more responsibility and impact than they would ever have at a traditional or large company."

Current Investors

Investors include BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Small Business Innovation Research Awards, Refactor Capital, Fifty Years Fund, Indicator Ventures, Y Combinator, Felicis Ventures and 29 more.

Astranis' Use of Funds Raised

The new funding will be used to significantly expand production of Astranis’s unique microsatellite platform, built to satisfy the significant global demand for affordable broadband.

Additionally, Astranis will dramatically accelerate new technology research and development to support its next-generation platforms. That includes the company’s proprietary software-defined radio technology, which increases satellite performance and flexibility, and allows manufacturing at scale, lowering the price point to end-consumers.

Risks associated with Astranis

Astranis’ has reported that its first commercial internet satellite will be unable to provide continuous coverage to Alaska due to a malfunction with both spacecraft’s solar panels.

CEO John Gedmark said the satellite “abruptly experienced” a pointing issue with the solar array drive assembly, the component that rotates the solar arrays relative to the sun. As a result of this issue, the solar arrays are no longer capable of providing adequate power to the spacecraft.

“This is a frustrating situation — the Arcturus spacecraft is in a safe state and fully under our control, the payload and our other Astranis in-house designed components are all working perfectly, and the tanks are fueled for years of on-orbit operation,” Gedmark said. “But unless something major changes, the mission of providing internet connectivity in Alaska will be delayed.”

How are Astranis driving innovation?

Astranis’s satellites can be deployed at a low cost and be built in months, not years. That’s in contrast to traditional satellites that require hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and five or more years to get new capacity online. The smaller size of Astranis’s satellites — just 350 kg, or about 20 times less than traditional satellites — and their deployment into geostationary orbit (GEO) allows Astranis to start providing coverage with just a single MicroGEO satellite and bring capacity online quickly, focusing beams of broadband connectivity right where it’s needed.

“We are solving one of the biggest problems facing the world today,” said Astranis co-founder and CEO John Gedmark. “Four billion people do not have reliable access to broadband internet. Getting connectivity to those who need it the most changes lives in a profound way. It empowers people to take control of their health, education, and economic situation. We’re talking about something that is now absolutely part of the base of the hierarchy of needs.” Astranis has projects in work around the globe to deploy satellites to bring connectivity to some of the world’s most underserved areas.