Aalyria announced its launch as an independent company. Aalyria’s advanced networking and laser communications technologies are capable of orchestrating and managing the most complex networks in the world, and extending them to places where there is no connectivity infrastructure – at an exponentially greater scale and speed than anything that exists today. The new company is commercialising these technologies with both private sector and government partners, already securing an initial [$8 million (€8.08 million)] contract with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to help develop secure internet connectivity throughout the space domain for both private and public sector customers.
These technologies were originally developed at Alphabet as part of its wireless connectivity efforts. Spacetime is Aalyria’s intelligent network orchestration technology and Tightbeam is its advanced atmospheric laser communications technology. Together they enable complex networks at a scale and speed that has never before been possible. Aalyria’s technology presently supports communications networks with up to 15 million possible links and wireless connection speeds up to 1.6 Tbps. In the future, it will facilitate the coordination and sharing of network resources across multiple networks with unlimited connections.
Spacetime
Spacetime is a software platform for orchestrating and managing networks of ground stations, aircraft, satellites, ships, urban meshes, and more. It optimises and continually evolves the antenna link scheduling, network traffic routing, and spectrum resources – responding in real time to changing network requirements. Spacetime operates networks across land, sea, air, and space, at any altitude or orbit type, supports all radio frequency bands and optical wavelengths, and is designed for interoperability with legacy, hybrid space, 5G NTN and FutureG network architectures. Spacetime is asset and domain agnostic, meaning it can orchestrate networks across nearly anything that is connectivity-equipped on Earth or in space – ships, planes, satellites, and space assets in near and deep space. Spacetime already has millions of flight hours orchestrating and managing airborne communications systems around the world. As the number of networks adopting Spacetime continues to grow, it will provide those network operators with unprecedented flexibility to craft agreements with each other that share spectrum or network resources across space and time.
Former deputy secretary of defense Bob Work says, “Aalyria’s vision and technical approach enables, for the first time, the complete communications and network solution for integrated deterrence. There is nothing else like it.”
Tightbeam
Tightbeam is the advanced coherent light free space optics technology. At 100-1000x faster than anything else available today and covering greater distances than previously imagined, Tightbeam’s coherent light laser moves data intact through the atmosphere and weather, and offers connectivity where no supporting infrastructure exists. Tightbeam radically improves satellite communications, Wi-Fi on planes, and ships, and cellular connectivity everywhere.
“These technologies set the new standard for intelligently orchestrating, managing, and extending mesh networks across all domains – land, sea, air, and space – to create connectivity everywhere – no matter the protocol,” says Chris Taylor, founder and CEO of Aalyria. “The connectivity on your plane, train, car, cruise ship, space station, lunar base camp, or Mars rover – and anywhere else in the solar system – ought to be as good as it is in your home. We are able to orchestrate cross-constellation inter-satellite links that enable the internetworking of government and commercial constellation providers. We can orchestrate high-speed urban meshes and global unified network operations, and we can help connect the next three billion people. We can do this today – and at scale. Aalyria is the digital cartilage and autonomous brain that allows everything to internetwork.”
“Aalyria offers a cutting-edge software defined network capability and optical network technology that is designed to deal with dynamic links, like space to ground, air to air, air to space and every combination between,” says company advisor and former Google VP of Wireless Services, Milo Medin. “The future of communications marries ground-based fibre with space, wireless, and optical links to enable the creation of a survivable on-demand network infrastructure, anytime and anywhere, at speeds that remove the network as a bottleneck. This is critical not just for the future of the Joint Force, but for extending the capabilities of the cloud to anywhere on the planet and beyond where the modern enterprise is delivering value.”
Aalyria is currently working with commercial space companies and governments to make their networks more resilient, and make their spectrum more profitable.
Aalyria’s team includes exceptional technical experts with experience at Google, Amazon, Meta, NASA, Cisco, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lockheed Martin, and more.
The Leadership Team
- Chris Taylor, CEO – Chris is a four-time CEO and entrepreneur who most recently was the CEO of Govini. Chris also spent 14 years in the U.S. Marine Corps as an enlisted infantryman and Force Recon Marine. He is a proud native of South Buffalo, NY.
- Nathan Wolfe, EVP and CTO – Prior to becoming an Aalyria founder in 2022, Nathan spent the previous six years at Google as a technical director and product area manager, focused on innovative hardware efforts, including what would become Tightbeam, key to “connecting the next three billion people.” Nathan started his professional career in the U.S. Air Force where he was an air traffic controller.
- Brian Barritt, EVP and CTO – For over six years, Brian Barritt led the team at Alphabet that developed what is now called Spacetime. For the last two years, Brian has supported open source cellular, decentralised wireless, and non-terrestrial connectivity efforts at Meta. Brian has also developed space communications systems for NASA.
- Dan Gaudreau, CFO – For 30 years, Dan has been a finance leader in software and hardware startups and global enterprises that were publicly and privately held. He’s led IPOs and ensured balanced controls in companies to make them as nimble as they can be while remaining fiscally responsible, too.
Board of Advisors
- Vint Cerf – is known as one of the fathers of the Internet. He is currently a vice president at Google Cloud, and working with NASA to establish the Interplanetary Internet.
- Robert O. Work – is the former deputy secretary of Defense and former vice-chairman of the congressionally-established National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.
- Maj. Gen. Kim Crider (Ret.) – is formerly the chief innovation & technology officer at U.S. Space Force, and the former chief data officer of the Air Force.
- Milo Medin – is the distinguished engineer at Schmidt Futures, former VP of wireless services at Google, and a former member of the Defense Innovation Board.
- Dave Rensin – is a senior director for Engineering at Google and a best-selling technology author. He was formerly the SVP of Engineering at Pendo.io, and former head of global network capacity planning at Google.
- Michael Cheng – is a former network engineer, M&A lawyer, and led open source product management at Meta (formerly Facebook). He also serves on the Linux Foundation’s board of directors.
- Eric Gillespie – is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Govini.
- Josh Marcuse – is the head of business development at Google Public Sector and former executive director of the Defense Innovation Board.
- Sharath Ananth – is a systems engineer at Google.
- Kent Eisenhuth – is a product design lead at Google. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and author of Drawing Product Ideas.
- Donald A. Cox III – is a global technologist and optical communications expert.
Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @VanillaPlus OR @jcvplus
