EON Raises $10.75 Million to Build a Space Laser Network for Global Data Centres

Endeavour Optical Networks (EON), a startup founded in May, has emerged from stealth with $10.75 million in seed funding to pursue an alternative to undersea fibre-optic cables for moving large volumes of data between continents. Backed by General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz, the company plans to build a network of laser-equipped satellites designed to connect hyperscale data centres through space.

As artificial intelligence companies and cloud providers rapidly expand data centre capacity worldwide, demand for high-speed data transport continues to grow. Today, most long-distance traffic depends on undersea fibre-optic cables, which can be difficult to install, maintain and repair. EON believes optical laser communications from orbit could eventually provide another option for those high-capacity connections.

Chief Executive Officer Charlie Horowitz and Chief Technology Officer Tyler Presser say advances in satellite technology and optical communications have made space-to-ground laser links increasingly practical. NASA has already demonstrated laser communications during its latest lunar mission, while companies including York, Kepler and Cailabs have tested similar technology between orbit and Earth.

Those demonstrations, however, have operated at speeds around 2.5 gigabits per second. EON’s initial target is significantly higher, to reach 2.4 terabits per second. According to Horowitz, achieving those speeds will require overcoming one of optical communications’ biggest technical challenges: atmospheric distortion and cloud interference that can weaken or interrupt laser signals.

Network designed for hyperscalers

The startup plans to deploy roughly 20 satellites capable of creating dedicated links between continents. The initial constellation is intended to provide continuous coverage for early customers by connecting carefully selected ground stations located near regional data centres and content delivery networks.

To improve reliability, EON plans to use multiple ground stations, weather forecasting and redundant infrastructure to route traffic when atmospheric conditions affect individual locations.

The company is targeting hyperscalers and AI laboratories because they transfer some of the world’s largest volumes of data. Early commercial opportunities are expected to focus on expensive or underserved routes, including long-distance links such as France to Australia and regions with limited terrestrial connectivity, including Africa to South America. Rather than selling shared bandwidth, EON plans to offer dedicated capacity for customers seeking greater control over data transmission.

Funding supports first demonstration.

The seed funding will be used to establish an optical communications laboratory, expand the engineering team and complete ground testing ahead of the company’s first demonstration satellite. Horowitz said EON hopes to launch that spacecraft around the end of 2027 and expects it to deliver an optical downlink of at least 800 gigabits per second, with a longer-term goal of reaching one terabit.

EON plans to develop its own optical communications terminal while relying on commercially available satellite buses from suppliers such as Apex Space, where Horowitz previously worked. He served as chief of staff to Apex Chief Executive Officer Ian Cinnamon before becoming the company’s director of special projects.

Cinnamon described Horowitz as a founder capable of combining strategic planning with technical execution, saying he invested personally in EON because of confidence in the founding team. Presser previously worked as an astronautical engineer planning advanced NASA missions. At the same time, other senior technical staff include former Google network infrastructure executive Michael David Francois and optics engineer Wesley Baxter, who most recently worked on Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite network.

Competition and technical challenges remain.

General Catalyst President and Managing Director Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, who led the investment, said the company aligns with the firm’s focus on artificial intelligence infrastructure and resilience. She said the principal challenge is not demand but executing the technology and deploying satellites on schedule.

EON is not the only company pursuing high-capacity space communications. Blue Origin has announced TeraWave, a planned constellation of 5,048 satellites designed to deliver speeds of up to 6 terabits per second to large-scale customers. While EON’s planned network is much smaller, the company believes a limited constellation could be deployed more quickly.

Industry observers caution that connecting data centres through satellites will require meeting demanding standards for reliability and redundancy. Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, said satellite communications are becoming more dependable. Still, building systems capable of supporting large-scale enterprise connectivity may take longer than many startups anticipate.

Horowitz said EON’s strategy is to focus on an existing infrastructure problem rather than pursuing more speculative concepts such as placing data centres in orbit. He said the company’s guiding principle is to avoid taking on unsolved physics problems while addressing the growing demand for moving ever-larger amounts of data around the world.