Satellite technology firm Loft Orbital and investor Marlan Space have announced a $1 billion deal that will see 50 craft running AI hardware launched into orbit.. The partners have dubbed the deal, announced by French President Emmanuel Macron at the International Space Summit in Paris, the “world’s largest AI intelligence satellite infrastructure.” The companies already have a plan to launch ten satellites, beginning later this year.. – Loft Orbital.
French generative AI firm Mistral will work with the partners on the deployment, as part of a plan to “build the future of agentic AI in space.”. The satellites will carry radar, optical, and other sensors, and are built to serve government users in France, Europe, and the UAE alongside a global base of commercial customers..
Unlike conventional systems, which deliver imagery hours after it’s downloaded and processed on the ground, these satellites analyze what they observe while still in orbit and transmit in seconds.. Loft Orbital, which is headquartered in Toulouse, France, and San Francisco, brings the platforms, onboard AI, software, and constellation operations experience behind the program.
It has launched more than 100 payloads and 20 AI missions in orbit, including a demonstration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory of a satellite running a vision-language model onboard.. “For the past few years, we have been working on deploying AI applications in space and orchestrating how they work together,” said Pierre-Damien Vaujour, CEO of Loft Orbital. “With this constellation, we’re giving our partners building agentic AI workflows in space a true world-class satellite infrastructure. I’m excited to see the first of these satellites launch in the coming weeks, and to start deploying solutions that have never before been possible in the space industry.”.
Services will run through an AI application store, letting customers select the models they need and run them on shared satellites. First applications include maritime domain awareness, wildfire detection and disaster response, and security of ports and critical infrastructure.. The satellites are produced by Orbitworks, a joint venture between United Arab Emirates-based Marlan Space and Loft Orbital, at its facility in Abu Dhabi, the region’s largest high-volume site for commercial constellations, giving the program the industrial capacity it needs to scale.. “When we set out to build this program, we bet on a future where intelligence would move into orbit, and that the UAE would be one of the places building it,” said Dr.
Hamdullah Mohib, CEO of Marlan Space. “This is where the industry is going, and we’re proud to be at the front of it. Fifty satellites, working together in groups with different capabilities as one system, make this one of the most advanced constellations in the world.
This turns a factory into a national capability, and the UAE from a buyer to a seller of satellite services, with engineering skills, intellectual property, and a supply chain that stays in the country long after the satellites are in orbit.”. Mistral joins the consortium to provide the onboard AI models giving the constellation its reasoning and natural-language tasking capabilities, and will power services in the AI application store..
French President Macron welcomed the deal, writing on LinkedIn: “By bringing together leaders in space and artificial intelligence, [France and the UAE] are showing that they can build, together, the technologies that will matter tomorrow.”. The project represents the latest attempt to put compute in orbit.
Companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin have revealed plans to operate space data centers in recent months.. More in Space. 16 Mar 2026.
23 Mar 2026. 12 May 2026. More in Europe.
30 Apr 2026
