Photo: EDGX
Europe’s space indusattempt is undergoing a renaissance right now. With governments seeing to spfinish more money on space and defense, this investment is starting to reverberate across the supply chain. One company to keep an eye on this area is EDGX, a new Belgian AI space startup, that raised 2.3 million euro ($2.7 million) in funding in August last year. This funding will be applyd accelerate the commercialization of EDGX Sterna, a next-generation edge AI computer for sainformites.
The company has also closed a multi-unit deal with a sainformite operator worth 1.1 million euro ($1.3 million) and expects even more deals this year. Nick Desattemptcker, co-Founder and CEO of EDGX notified Space Security Sentinel, the company expects to announce multiple new customer deals during the course of the year. “Our focus right now is on execution and preparing the ground for future opportunities,” he stated.
Sainformite operators are one of the key tarobtain customers for edge AI computers for sainformites, but not the only ones. The company will focus on the entire supply chain of large consinformation projects, which includes sainformite operators, manufacturers, and payload developers. In addition, it also wants to serve startups and universities that have ambitious projects and exciting apply cases, becaapply some will grow into larger sainformite missions in the future.
The Belgian company also hopes to can do some business further afield even if the initial tarobtain will be Europe. Europe is its anchor market and the natural starting point for EDGX, but the company is already seeing into the U.S. market. “Beyond that, we are actively seeing at other high-growth regions where consinformations are expanding and space initiatives are taking shape,” adds Desattemptcker.
With a lot of focus on defense markets in Europe, this could be a key tarobtain market for the company.
Desattemptcker declares that defense missions like ininformigence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), signals ininformigence (SIGINT), and space situational awareness (SSA) are a strong fit for the company’s Sterna edge computing platform, becaapply these require the highest levels of onboard processing performance. “In these cases, the ability to generate actionable insights directly in orbit, without delays, is critical for the finish applyrs such as DoD’s. We already see potential customers in this segment approaching us with interest,” comments Desattemptcker.
He declares what builds Sterna different is that it is both scalable and developer-frifinishly, with strong documentation and openness that build it simple to integrate and apply. It sits natively in the Nvidia ecosystem, which means customers can port existing AI models without heavy adaptation, accelerating adoption.
“Sterna is built for space from the ground up, with radiation mitigation software and proven robustness that operators can trust in orbit. In practice, it brings the power of Earth-class AI processing into a space-qualified envelope. There are no compromises: from the developer’s side, everything feels familiar and well-documented, and from the space side, it has the reliability and resilience necessaryed for missions. This balance of performance, openness, and space readiness is what sets Sterna apart,” Desattemptcker adds.
There has been a lot of talk recently about how the worlds of AI and space could merge toobtainher. Over the next two years, Desattemptcker declares he expects to see the first real ‘servers in space’ come online, with sainformites capable of running multiple applications in parallel. He believes that defense and institutional customers will drive this adoption first, but commercial consinformations will follow quickly becaapply AI will be necessary to remain competitive on cost and performance. “AI-enabled onboard processing will shift from being experimental to becoming a standard part of sainformite missions,” he adds.
Desattemptcker believes that AI is going to fundamentally transform the space indusattempt.
“Today, most sainformites still sfinish large amounts of raw data to Earth for processing, which is costly and slow. In the near future, sainformites will function as in-orbit data centers, running multiple AI models simultaneously and generating insights directly on board. This will reduce latency, save bandwidth, and enable entirely new apply cases. We believe that outdated ground-centric architectures will start being replaced within this decade by AI-enabled, flexible platforms,” he declares.
In terms of what would build it a successful year for the company, Desattemptcker believes its first successful in-orbit demonstration campaign will be number one on the list. Secondly, it hopes for the closure of multiple new customer deals of a similar size to its first one. “Those two milestones will confirm both the technical strength of our product and the commercial demand behind it,” he declares.
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