EON raises $10.75M seed to link data centers with space lasers
What's the deal? Endeavor Optical Networks (EON)Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a startup founded in May, has emerged from stealth with $10.75 million in seed funding from General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz. The company plans to launch a network of laser-equipped spacecraft to link data centers from orbit, offering an alternative to undersea fiberoptic cables.
Why now? Hyperscalers building out data centers worldwide rely on a brittle network of undersea cables that are hard to install and repair. Radio transmissions lack the bandwidth to compete, but more powerful satellites and advances in optical technology are making space-to-ground laser links feasible.
What's the endgame? EON aims to build a fleet of about 20 satellites, each providing a dedicated link between two continents, with 24-hour coverage for early customers. It is targeting throughput of 2.4 terabits a second — far above the 2.5 Gbps demonstrated by peers like York, Kepler, and Cailabs.
The seed round will fund an optics lab, more engineers, and ground tests ahead of a demo satellite the company hopes to launch around the end of 2027. Chief executive officer Charlie Horowitz expects that spacecraft to deliver the highest optical downlink throughput yet — at least 800 gigabits and perhaps a terabit.
Who's building it? Horowitz co-founded EON with chief technology officer Tyler Presser, a PhD astronautical engineer who has planned missions for NASADealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The technical bench includes Michael David Francois, a long-time GoogleDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → executive focused on network infrastructure, and Wesley Baxter, an optics engineer who most recently worked on Amazon's LEO satellite network.
The company will focus on building the optical communications terminal, buying off-the-shelf satellite busses from firms like Apex SpaceDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Horowitz's former employer. EON is pitching hyperscalers and AI labs, targeting underserved or expensive routes such as France to Australia or links between Africa and South America.
What could go wrong? Laser signals are distorted by the atmosphere, especially when clouds block the path. EON plans to counter this with redundant ground stations chosen by region and weather data to keep links reliable.
The signal: As AI labs and cloud providers push ever more data across the globe, the fragility of undersea cables is drawing fresh scrutiny — and capital toward orbital alternatives. EON's bet is that lasers, not fiber, will carry the next generation of the data superhighway.
Read more: TechCrunch
Image credit: europeanspaceagency
