Distributed Orbital Cloud orchestration · Series Seed Preferred · 2026-05-23
Round: $7M at $27M pre / $34M postLead: Non Sibi Ventures ($2M)Close: June 30, 2026Status: Oversubscribed
Headline Rating
6.75/10
Take a meeting. Push the five DD questions. $50K–$100K small check only if all five clear cleanly. Do not lead. Do not exceed $100K until on-orbit telemetry and cap-table reconciliation confirmed.
Blended Agent Ratings
Lens
Rating
Recommended check
Institutional VC
7.0
$100K–$150K
Aerospace specialist
7.0
$100K–$150K
Pragmatic angel
7.0
$100K–$150K
Financial analyst
7.0
$100K–$150K
Verification (independent sources)
6.5–7.0
$50K–$100K post-DD only
Blended
6.75
$50K–$100K conditional
What Is Real & Verified
VERIFIED Rogue Space OTP-2 hosting partnership (Feb 23, 2026)
VERIFIED NASA STTR Phase I (Satlyt Inc., SPATIAM Hybrid QoS Control System, TRL 2→3)
VERIFIED CEO Rama Afullo — real Tesla / Google / SpaceX Starlink PM background
VERIFIED CTO Nelson Psenjen Kigen — still on team per LinkedIn
VERIFIED NVIDIA Inception + Google AI Academy + NSF I-Corps validation stack
VERIFIED Round genuinely oversubscribed
What Does Not Survive Public Verification
Momentus Vigoride 7 / DPhi deployment (claimed Mar 30, 2026) is unverified. Payload Space coverage of the DPhi second demo (Apr 29, 2026) names only Liquid AI as the on-orbit software tenant. Satlyt not named in any Momentus or DPhi public materials.
Prior Antler pre-seed was $300K, not $1M. Crunchbase, StartupList Africa, and Tracxn all show $300K. Deck and prior memory both inflate.
NASA STTR partner is University of Florida (Prof. Hamed Dalir), not University of Houston as the deck claims. Either there is a second STTR or the deck has the partner wrong.
Non Sibi Ventures is not a space domain fund. Kent Lucas (ex Capital Group) + Sid Smith. Only 3 confirmed prior investments (SparkCharge, ChargerHelp, DexMat). Zero prior space or aerospace investments. Industrial / sustainability thematic fund.
Top 5 DD Questions (Must Clear Before Any Check)
Momentus / DPhi confirmation. Signed PO with DPhi or Momentus, telemetry logs from on-orbit, dollar value, Liquid AI co-tenant clarification. Why does public press only name Liquid AI on DPhi Clustergate 2?
NASA STTR partner letter. Award document showing partner institution. UF (per NASA archive) or UH (per deck)?
Cap table & prior round reconciliation. Was Aug 2024 Antler pre-seed $300K or $1M? Signed sub agreements. Additional angel SAFEs 2024–2025 rolled into "pre-seed"?
$150K invoiced revenue breakdown across 6 confirmed 2026 missions. Signed POs, dollar values per mission, payment terms. How much is recurring $4,200/sat/mo SaaS vs lumpy mission integration?
Nelson Psenjen employment & equity status. Full-time confirmation, vesting cliff, retention agreement, hours commitment, named systems engineering #2 if he were to depart.
Probability-Weighted EV
Scenario
Avg P
Outcome value
Contribution
Wind down / zero
42%
$0–$5M
$1M
Acqui-hire $30M–$80M
27%
$50M
$13.5M
Strategic exit $150M–$400M
20%
$250M
$50M
Breakout $1B+
9%
$1.5B
$135M
Generational
2%
$20B
$400M
Blended company EV
~$600M
On a $100K check at $34M post (assuming 50% future dilution): ~0.15% post-dilution ownership, expected return ~$900K, so ~9× gross on a long-dated outcome. 73% of EV comes from breakout + generational scenarios — heavily power-law driven.
Sophia has the harder moat (passive cooling IP, 7-exit founder, MIT Lincoln Labs paying customer, NVIDIA-led SAFE, Kepler hardware partnership). Satlyt has more on-orbit demonstrations (1 confirmed) but no hardware IP and weaker founder pedigree. Sophia wins on defensibility. Satlyt half-tick below.
vs. BESXAR (7.5)
BESXAR has OpenAI founding team, signed SpaceX 12-mission deal, DoD prime contract. Satlyt has broader NASA portfolio but no comparable single anchor contract. BESXAR wins on founder pedigree and customer concentration.
vs. Aethero (BORO-SM ~8.0)
Aethero is rad-hardened edge compute hardware ($8.4M seed June 2025, Kindred Ventures, EnduroSat FRAME 15 Titan mission Oct 2026). Different layer (hardware not orchestration). Aethero is the bar Satlyt needs to clear to justify a meaningful Daxos check.
vs. Wootz Nano (6.5)
Both dual-use defense-adjacent infra plays. Wootz has more concrete government revenue ($69K 2024 → $2.5M 2026 projected, AFWERX SBIR). Satlyt has on-orbit execution Wootz lacks, and a stronger institutional validation stack. Satlyt above Wootz.
Recommendation
Take a meeting. Push hard on the 5 DD questions above. If all 5 clear cleanly, write a $50K–$100K small check alongside Non Sibi Ventures, treating this as a sleeve position with optionality on the breakout scenarios.
Do not lead. Do not exceed $100K until: (a) Momentus/DPhi deployment confirmed with telemetry, (b) at least 2 of the 6 confirmed missions revealed as paid recurring contracts at $4K+/sat/month, (c) cap table reconciliation matches deck narrative.
If any of the 5 DD questions returns ambiguous or evasive answers — pass and revisit at Series A with execution data.