Loft Orbital, a global space infrastructure company, and Marlan Space, a UAE-based investor and subsidiary of IHC, today announced a $1 billion program to build the world’s largest artificial intelligence satellite infrastructure. The plan was announced at the International Space Summit in Paris by Marlan Space and Loft Orbital, by French President Emmanuel Macron. This funds the jump from a proven ten-satellite demonstration to a fifty-satellite fleet.

The satellites will carry radar, optical and other sensors, and are built to serve government users in France, Europe and the UAE alongside a global base of commercial customers. Unlike conventional systems, which deliver imagery hours after it’s downloaded and processed on the ground, these satellites analyze what they observe while still in orbit and transmit in seconds. Services run through an AI application store, letting customers select the models they need and run them on shared satellites. First applications include maritime domain awareness, wildfire detection and disaster response, and security of ports and critical infrastructure.

Loft Orbital brings the platforms, onboard AI and software, and constellation operations experience behind the program, drawing on a track record of more than 100 payloads and 20 AI missions in orbit. This includes a demonstration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory of a satellite running a vision-language model onboard.

“This represents the kind of ambitious, technology-led platform we want to build through Marlan Space,” said Syed Basar Shueb, CEO of IHC. “By bringing together advanced satellite infrastructure, AI, sovereign capabilities and world-class international partners, this investment positions the UAE and France at the forefront of a rapidly evolving space economy. For IHC, it’s also a powerful example of how we connect capital, technology and global partnerships to build platforms with lasting strategic and commercial relevance.”

The satellites are produced by Orbitworks, a joint venture between Marlan Space and Loft Orbital, at its facility in Abu Dhabi, the region’s largest high-volume site for commercial constellations, giving the program the industrial capacity it needs to scale.

“When we set out to build this program, we bet on a future where intelligence would move into orbit, and that the UAE would be one of the places building it,” said Dr. Hamdullah Mohib, CEO of Marlan Space and Orbitworks [signing on behalf of Marlan Space]. “This is where the industry is going, and we’re proud to be at the front of it. Fifty satellites, working together in groups with different capabilities as one system, make this one of the most advanced constellations in the world. This turns a factory into a national capability, and the UAE from a buyer to a seller of satellite services, with engineering skills, intellectual property, and a supply chain that stays in the country long after the satellites are in orbit.”

“For the past few years, we have been working on deploying AI applications in space and orchestrating how they work together,” said Pierre-Damien Vaujour, CEO of Loft Orbital. “With this constellation, we’re giving our partners building agentic AI workflows in space a true world-class satellite infrastructure. I’m excited to see the first of these satellites launch in the coming weeks, and to start deploying solutions that have never before been possible in the space industry.”

Mistral joins the consortium to provide the onboard models giving the constellation its reasoning and natural-language tasking capabilities, and will power services in the AI application store.

BlackSky, a U.S. company with a majority of its supply chain in Europe, also joins the team to provide high-resolution optical satellites at the highest performance commercially available. This builds on years of history with Loft Orbital, dating back to satellite buses built through Leostella, its former joint venture with Thales Alenia Space.

“We’re proud to be selected as a key partner and the highest-resolution optical provider on this program,” said Brian O’Toole, CEO of BlackSky. “Our technology’s proven, on-orbit performance stands as an essential capability behind the world’s first AI-enabled constellation.”

The first ten satellites are already in production in Abu Dhabi, with the first launching this October.

About Loft

Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable way to deploy missions in orbit, integrating and operating spacecraft so customers can focus on mission outcomes rather than building satellites themselves. Loft has flown more than 25 missions and operates facilities in San Francisco, Golden, Colorado, and Toulouse, France. In 2024, Loft and Marlan Space established Orbitworks, the Middle East’s first private space-infrastructure company.

About Marlan Space

Marlan Space is a UAE-based investor-operator focused on building and scaling companies and technologies across the space economy, and a subsidiary of IHC. Marlan Space founded and operates Orbitworks with Loft Orbital in Abu Dhabi.

About Orbitworks

Orbitworks Satellites Manufacturing is a UAE-based satellite manufacturing and space services company focused on developing cost-effective, high-performance space systems. Orbitworks enables broader access to space through integrated satellite platforms, constellations, and Earth Observation services tailored to evolving mission needs.

About Mistral

Mistral is a pioneer company in generative artificial intelligence, empowering the world with the tools to build and benefit from the most transformative technology of our time. The company democratizes AI through high-performance, optimized, and cutting-edge open-source models, products and solutions as well as end-to-end infrastructure with Mistral Compute. Headquartered in France and independent, Mistral defends a decentralized and transparent approach to technology, with a strong global presence in the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore.

About BlackSky

BlackSky is a real-time, space-based intelligence company delivering on-demand, high-frequency imagery and analytics through its proprietary low earth orbit satellite constellation and Spectra® tasking platform, trusted by leading U.S. and international government and commercial customers.

About IHC

Established in 1999, IHC is the most valuable holding company in the Middle East and one of the world’s largest investment firms, with a market capitalization of USD 229 billion, spanning more than 1,300 subsidiaries across technology, infrastructure, financial services and consumer sectors.

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