Europe and UAE plan $1 billion orbital data center with 50 connected "computers" and a central "LLM store" that allows users to select what open source model to use on data collected by satellite sensors

Date:
Mon, 28 Sep 2026 19:15:00 +0000

Description:
A UAE-financed, France-anchored consortium plans to launch 50 AI-equipped Earth observation satellites and build an in-orbit model marketplace.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Marlan Space and Loft Orbital announce $1bn program to grow the Altair AI Earth observation constellation from ten satellites to fifty The fleet, which is funded by money from a UAE-based investor, Marlan Space will leverage French AI lab Mistral AI's models onboard None of the first ten satellites (which are in production)
have launched yet, with a stated timeline of five years for deployment French President Emmanuel Macron used the stage at recent the International Space Summit in Paris to announce a $1 billion program led by Abu Dhabi's Marlan Space and Loft Orbital.

The cash infusion takes their Altair Earth observation constellation from 10 satellites to 50, with French AI company Mistral supplying the models that
run onboard. The satellites will carry radar, optical and other sensors and are designed to interpret what they see before anything reaches the ground, sending an alert within seconds rather than raw imagery that would otherwise hours to download and process. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: A sensor network that thinks on the fly and more The architecture is serious and addresses a real bottleneck: the proposed design will essentially act as an orbital data center with 50 connected "compute units" and a centralized app store that lets users choose which LLMs to run on satellite-collected data.

Customers not only get access through what the partners call an AI
application store, but can also choose the models they want, run them on shared spacecraft, and export the data they need to external models if required. You may like AI in orbit: The next evolution of compute infrastructure Google is launching its AI chips into space Project
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"Working together, Loft Orbital and Marlan Space have assembled a consortium required to build out a 50-satellite, AI-enabled, multi-modal constellation," Alex Greenberg, co-founder and COO at Loft told TechRadar Pro.

"The satellites are produced by Orbitworks at its facility in Abu Dhabi, the regions largest high-volume site for commercial constellations. Mistral joins the consortium to provide the onboard models giving the constellation its reasoning and natural-language tasking capabilities in orbit, and will power services in the AI application store. More consortium partners will be announced over time." Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners
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This deal, therefore, falls into the same category as the space data center plans filed by US-based SpaceX and Blue Origin, with the proposals centering on hosting general-purpose compute and renting it out to potential buyers.

Altair-Next Gen, as the program is called in the Marlan-issued version of the release , processes data collected by its own sensors, even as it stresses that the 50 satellites would allow it to essentially offer something akin to
a "permanent capability" versus traditional solutions that beam back data hours later and often require it to be processed on the ground.

The more interesting story, however, is the application store that the
program pushes, which is a more novel idea. It lets customers choose which model to use. It also leaves it unclear whether the store would restrict open-source or open-weight models.

At a time when Mistral remains one of the most powerful EU AI brokers, trailing behind only US and China-based frontrunners on frontier AI models, this is an important step for both the European Union and its UAE-based investment backer to invest in an alternative, even as US labs are looking to slow down or 'pace the frontier' over AI concerns, something that has
provoked rebukes from other industry players such as Palantir as well as the White House, with the US president himself addressing and downplaying the issue. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to
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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/europe-and-uae-plan-usd1-billion-orbital-data-ce nter-with-50-connected-computers-and-a-central-llm-store-that-allows-users-to- select-what-open-source-model-to-use-on-data-collected-by-satellite-sensors


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