A new startup wants to move intercontinental data off the seabed, and into orbit.
Endeavor Optical Networks (EON) emerged from stealth on Tuesday, announcing $10.8M in seed funding co-led by General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz. The company is aiming to build a constellation of optical communications satellites in MEO to provide a cheaper, more resilient alternative to subsea cables.
The why: Subsea cables carry ~95% of intercontinental data, and they are sitting targets. Cables may be severed by dragged anchors, sabotage, and natural disasters—with repairs running weeks to months.
EON’s pitch is a redundant route that’s above those potential threats—way above.
“You’re not going to go take an anchor through free space,” EON CEO and cofounder Charlie Horowitz told Payload. “It’s a non-correlated alternative.”
Up and over: EON’s proposed approach uses a bent-pipe design that involves ground stations sending data via laser to a single satellite, which would then reflect that signal down across the ocean.
The architecture would include:
- ~20 sats flying at ~13,000 km;
- ~2.4 Tbps per link, the target for fiber-level throughput;
- Regional ground stations serving local servers, with redundant sites for weather disruptions.
The goal, as Horowitz puts it, is to actually do as little as possible in space. “If we could do this with literally just a mirror, it would be just a mirror,” Horowitz said.
Bits and budgets: Subsea only looks cheap on the surface, Horowitz argues. Cables cost hundreds of millions of dollars to lay, and rely on heavy upkeep and limited repair ships. EON views ground stations similarly—instead focusing on keeping space cheap.
- Ground stations are seen as capex—built once, and effectively permanent.
- For satellites, EON aims to use COTS parts wherever possible, and build toward a 10-year lifespan.
- EON is betting that per-bit cost falls as the sat constellation scales—as long as it can match or beat the terrestrial price tag.
Pathway to proof: EON aims to be fully operational by 2029, but the hardest technical challenge still lies ahead—closing a full-distance link at speed.
The company will fly a demo sat mission in LEO NET late 2027 or early 2028 to validate pointing, acquisition, and tracking faster and cheaper. Horowitz expects it to be the highest-throughput optical downlink demonstrated to date.
The demo will validate the components rather than the architecture. The next step will be to prove that the same link also works in the higher-altitude, radiation-heavy MEO.
Today, the company is using the seed money to transition into a new facility—a ~15,000-sq-ft space in southern California divided between office and manufacturing facilities. The new space will have an in-house optics lab where EON will build and test its pointing hardware and telescope.
EON has a thesis, a team, and $10.8M. What it doesn’t have yet is a working link. “Everything we’re doing,” Horowitz said, “is just really hard engineering.”
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