After Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump met at the White House, India and the US announced significant efforts aimed at promoting collaboration in emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, and civil space. The US-India TRUST program, an AI infrastructure roadmap, and the INDUS Innovation platform to promote collaborations in energy, space, and defence are among the major announcements. In the official statement, the leaders announced the launch of the U.S.-India TRUST (“Transforming the Relationship Utilising Strategic Technology”) initiative, which will encourage the use of verified technology vendors and ensure the protection of sensitive technologies while promoting government-to-government, academic, and private sector collaboration to promote the application of critical and emerging technologies in fields like defence, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing, biotechnology, energy, and space. By the end of the year, the business sectors in both nations will present a US-India Roadmap on Accelerating AI Infrastructure as part of this endeavour. With milestones and next steps, this roadmap will outline the obstacles to funding, developing, supplying, and linking extensive AI infrastructure of American provenance in India.
Along with addressing the safeguards and controls required to protect these technologies and lower regulatory barriers, the two nations will also facilitate industry partnerships and investments in next-generation data centres, collaboration on the development and access to computing and processors for AI, innovations in AI models, and the creation of AI applications to address societal challenges.
Launching of LNDUS Innovation
To maintain India and US leadership in innovation and to meet 21st-century demands, the two leaders also announced the launch of INDUS Innovation, a new innovation bridge modelled after the successful INDUS-X platform. This bridge will promote investments in space, energy, and other emerging technologies and advance industry and academic partnerships. The leaders also welcomed the next summit in 2025 and reaffirmed their commitment to the INDUS-X project, which facilitates collaborations between Indian and American defence businesses, investors, and academic institutions to generate vital capabilities for our forces. According to the release, the leaders also pledged to create reliable and robust supply chains for sophisticated materials, semiconductors, vital minerals, and pharmaceuticals as part of the TRUST project. The leaders want to promote public and private investments to increase Indian manufacturing capacity for active pharmaceutical ingredients for essential medications, especially in the US, as part of this endeavour. These investments will lower the risk of shortages of life-saving medications in both India and the US, diversify essential supply chains, and generate excellent jobs.
Unearthing the Potentials of Minerals
India and the US will increase research and development cooperation and encourage investment throughout the critical mineral value chain, as well as through the Mineral Security Partnership, of which both countries are members, in recognition of the significance of critical minerals for cutting-edge manufacturing and emerging technologies. In addition to announcing the launch of the Strategic Mineral Recovery initiative, a new US-India program to recover and process critical minerals (such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earths) from heavy industries like aluminium, coal mining, and oil and gas, the leaders of the two nations pledged to step up efforts to deepen their understanding of various critical mineral technologies.
In order to ensure technology security, the leaders of both the nations have decided that their governments will step up efforts to improve high-tech trade, ease export regulations, and lower obstacles to technology transfer between the two nations. According to the statement, the leaders also decided to cooperate in order to combat the shared problem of unfair export control activities by third parties looking to take advantage of the overconcentration of vital supply chains.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Astranis.
The world’s absolutely insatiable demand for bandwidth is providing a trillion-dollar market opportunity to the organizations operating in the Satellite Internet industry. Many companies strive to build satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit to provide low-cost broadband on Earth.
However, very few organizations are focusing on the GEO band, where the large legacy communication satellites are operating and orbiting the Earth at a fixed position to provide connectivity to a specific fixed region. Astranis follows the GEO band approach and has become a successful communications satellite designer and developer.
Going through this article will help you learn more about Astranis, its founders, startup story, products, business model, funding, and more.
Astranis Space Technologies Corporation, trading as Astranis, is a private US-based geostationary communications satellite operator and manufacturer. With its offices in Alaska, Peru, and North America, the company builds small, low-cost telecommunications satellites to provide internet access in remote areas.
Astranis – Industry
Astranis is operating in the Satellite Internet industry. Talking about satellite internet, it is a wireless network that covers satellite dishes orbiting the Earth. It helps people in remote locations access the internet and up-to-date information.
The global market size of satellite internet was estimated at $8,231.47 million in 2022 and is projected to grow 13.6% CAGR from 2023 to 2030. Now that satellite internet technology provides users with incredible speed and data, several developing economies like India, Malaysia, Vietnam, and others are rapidly adopting such services resulting in market growth.
In addition to, Astranis, Inmarsat, Viasat, Intelsat, Iridium Communications, and SpaceX are among the top-performing companies in the satellite internet industry.
John Gedmark and Ryan McLinko are the founders of Astranis.
John Gedmark
John Gedmark – Co-founder and CEO, Astranis
John Gedmark is an American entrepreneur who graduated from Purdue University with a BSc and Stanford University with a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering.
In addition to Astranis, he co-founded Roosevelt Institute and Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Moreover, he has been an ex-Director of Flight Operations at the X Prize Foundation. Currently, he is the CEO of Astranis.
Ryan McLinko
Ryan McLinko – Co-founder and CTO, Astranis
Ryan McLinko attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics. He worked as Structural Engineer at TALARIS Google Lunar X PRIZE and Systems Engineer at Sierra Nevada Corporation.
Moreover, Ryan is Space Frontier Foundation’s ex-Conference Advisor and Planet Labs’s ex-Spacecraft Engineer. At present, he is Astranis’ Co-Founder and CTO.
Astranis is a team of more than 300 world-class engineers from SpaceX, Boeing, and technology companies like Apple, Skybox, Qualcomm, and Google.
Astranis – Startup Story
Astranis was founded in 2015 by John Gedmark and Ryan McLinko based on the idea that small satellites in higher orbits can provide billions of people with cost-effective access to broadband internet.
It only started in 2016 and was part of the Y Combinator accelerator’s Winter 2016 cohort. It was in 2018 that the company launched a prototype, and in the fourth quarter, Astranis finished the work on its first commercial satellite for a launch on a SpaceX rocket.
In January 2019, Astranis entered into its first commercial partnership with Pacific Dataport, Inc to triple Alaska’s satellite internet capacity. The company successfully launched the 350 kg satellite on April 30, 2023, onboard a Falcon Heavy in addition to ViaSAT 3 Americas and Gravity Space’s GS-1.
Astranis – Mission and Vision
The mission of Astranis is to help 4 billion people who are without internet access get online.
Astranis – Business Model
Astranis follows a unique payload technology that allows frequency and coverage flexibility along with maximum use of valuable spectrum. This approach enables the company to build satellites in 12-18 months, five times faster than the competitors.
Astranis provides bandwidth-as-a-service and unlocks unreachable markets by owning and operating its satellites and offering them to consumers as a turnkey solution. It further allows the company to launch small, dedicated satellites for small to medium-sized nations. Astranis’ all satellites can provide a maximum capacity of 10 Gbps.
Astranis found it challenging to pack the 20 times larger traditional geosynchronous satellites in the satellites about the size of dishwashers while surviving the harsh radiation environment of that distant orbit.
Astranis – Funding and Investors
Astranis has conducted 9 funding rounds and raised a total of $553.5 million. Its latest funding round – Venture – Series Unknown, was led on April 14, 2023, and secured $200 million. 40 investors fund the company, including Andreessen Horowitz, Rising Tide, BlackRock, Sahin Boydas, and Soma Capital.
Date
Round
Number of Investors
Money Raised
Lead Investor
April 14, 2023
Debt Financing
1
–
–
April 14, 2023
Venture Round
1
$200 million
Andreessen Horowitz
April 14, 2021
Series C
20
$250 million
Black Rock
February 13, 2020
Series B
8
$40 million
Venrock
February 13, 2020
Debt Financing
1
$50 million
TriplePoint Capital
March 1, 2018
Series A
5
$13.5 million
Andreessen Horowitz
June 10, 2016
Seed Round
1
–
–
April 22, 2016
Seed Round
19
–
Refactor Capital
January 9, 2016
Pre Seed Round
9
–
Fifty Years
Astranis – Patents and Trademarks
Astranis is registered with 3 patents, mainly in the ‘Electric Communication Technique’ category. Moreover, it has 5 registered trademarks, with ‘Scientific and Electric Apparatus’ being the popular category.
Astranis – Growth
Astranis earned annual revenue of $77.5 million in 2022, with $277,720 in revenue per employee. Moreover, it was valued at $1.6 billion in 2023. The company’s employee count grew by 25% last year, and monthly web visit growth is 163.8%, with 47 949 monthly visits.
Keeping Space Secure: our new Space Force contract
Astranis is ranked 6th among its 111 active competitors. Some of the company’s primary competitors are:
OneWeb
Omnispace
Orbion Space Technology
SES Satellites
Kacific Broadband Satellites
Inmarsat HawkEye 360
Astranis – Future Plan
Astranis plans to launch five satellites, with many more to follow.
FAQs
What does Astranis do?
Astranis is a private US-based geostationary communications satellite operator and manufacturer. It follows the GEO band approach and has become a successful communications satellite designer and developer.
Who founded Astranis?
John Gedmark and Ryan McLinko are the founders of Astranis.
Where is Astranis’s headquarters?
Astranis’s headquarters is located in San Francisco, California, United States.
What is satellite internet?
Satellite internet is a wireless network that covers satellite dishes orbiting the Earth. It helps people in remote locations access the internet and up-to-date information.
Nitin Konde
