Free Reads The USD 8 M Bet That Africa Can Win The Space Data Centre Race Without Launching A Single Satellite By Staff Reporter  |  October 2, 2026 Rama Afullo pitched orbital data centres inside Google and SpaceX. Both said no. So he raised USD 8 M to build what they wouldn’t. Satlyt, his Sunnyvale and Nairobi-based startup, closed a seed round this week led by Houston’s Non Sibi Ventures, with participation from TLCOM, Antler, Launch Africa Ventures, and others. The company’s software launched Thursday on a SpaceX rocket, riding alongside Google’s first Project Suncatcher prototype. Most satellites already carry unused computing power. Satlyt’s software turns that idle hardware into a distributed AI network. Instead of building new spacecraft, the company makes existing ones smarter. Afullo compares it to VMware or Snowflake, a software layer that abstracts away the infrastructure. “If SpaceX is the iPhone, we’ll build Android,” he told TechCrunch. This matters because the orbital data centre race is heating…