Skynopy, a Paris-based satellite connectivity startup, is partnering with Amazon AWS to increase its ground station footprint and provide more reliable downlink capabilities to satellites on orbit.
The partnership will give Skynopy 15 ground stations, up from just three. However, the collaboration means much more than just wider access to terrestrial antennas.
“We want to go from a model where the customers [were] caring about the location of those stations and how many [there were], to where it matters how much data you can download per orbit,” Skynopy CEO Pierre Bertrand told Payload.
Howdy partner: Under the agreement, Skynopy will act as a customer of Amazon ground stations. AWS will provide the antennas while Skynopy plugs in its technical infrastructure to make the connection with satellites on orbit more seamless.
Ultimately, Skynopy will manage the full cycle of infrastructure, including the modems and all the tech necessary to process and filter data, as well as send and receive telemetric information and commands to their customers’ satellites.
Vote of confidence: It’s still early days for Skynopy. The company is less than a year old, so the partnership with AWS could signal to the market that the company’s tech and business model has huge upside potential.
The company recently raised $3.1M to kick off its ground station as a service model. The goal is to allow satellites to remain consistently connected with operators on the ground without having to orient their satellites to a specific ground station, similar to how smartphones connect to any available cell tower without input from the user.
Bertrand and co-founder Antonin Hirsch argue that the partnership with AWS validates Skynopy’s business model.
“We’re super early stage, and we don’t have thousands of customers yet, but they see in us the value that we bring commercially,” Bertrand said. “It shows that Skynopy having this vision of bringing the end-to-end connectivity is not just a dream, it has specific value for AWS.”
