Nova Lux Orbital
Europe's sovereign orbital AI compute — satellites that think, not just photograph.
Roughly 98% of the data generated by satellites in orbit is deleted before it ever reaches the ground. The downlink cannot keep up, ground-station passes are minutes long, and ITU spectrum coordination takes years. The constraint is physics, not software.
Nova Lux Orbital flips the architecture: compute moves to where the data is. Satellites run AI inference on board, in real time, and the bytes leaving orbit are the insight — a maritime track, a change-detection alert, a classified ISR product — rather than raw imagery. Optical backhaul and an inter-satellite mesh remove the RF bottleneck, with IRIS² as an accelerator from 2028, not a dependency.
Three things have changed in the last twenty-four months that make this possible now: edge compute (NVIDIA Jetson-class hardware at single-digit watts per teraflop), optical backhaul becoming a procurable component, and European sovereignty mandates that structurally exclude US hyperscalers and Chinese supply chains from defence and institutional procurement.
The plan is staged and capital-efficient: Spark (2027) proves the architecture in orbit, Forge (2028) brings first commercial revenue, and the NLO-Mini constellation (from 2029) carries the thesis at scale — targeting €73M of revenue by 2035 with ~76% gross margin and a 17-month payback per satellite.
- —Incorporating in Luxembourg as a Société Anonyme; €0 equity raised to date, fully self-funded.
- —Grant pipeline of ~€2.8M under application (YIE, DIANA, ESA BIC, Fit4Start).
- —Founder & CEO: Sven Clement. CTO commitment from a NASA Lunar Gateway HALO veteran at SAFE close.
- —Operating details will be expanded once the entity is formally registered.