A startup called Endeavor Optical Networks emerged from stealth today with a plan to use laser-equipped satellites to connect data centers around the world, raising $10.75 million in seed funding from General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz. The company, founded in May by CEO Charlie Horowitz and CTO Tyler Presser, wants to provide an alternative to the fragile network of undersea fiber cables that currently carry data between continents. According to the announcement, EON aims to beam information at speeds rivaling ocean floor infrastructure, which isn't easy to install or fix when things go wrong.

EON's starting target is throughput of 2.4 terabits per second, Horowitz says, far exceeding the 2.5 Gbps connections that private space companies like York, Kepler, and Cailabs have shown in demonstrations between Earth orbit and the ground. The company plans to build roughly 20 satellites, each capable of creating a dedicated connection between two continents, with the first fleet offering round-the-clock coverage for early customers. Their demo satellite, slated for launch around the end of 2027, is expected to deliver the highest optical downlink throughput yet achieved, offering at least 800 gigabits and possibly a terabit. The startup will use its seed capital to establish an optics lab, bring on additional engineers, and conduct ground testing before that demonstration flight.

The company is pitching hyperscalers and AI labs as potential customers, since they transfer more information than anyone else, with a focus on routes that are underserved or costly, such as lengthy connections like France to Australia or those without extensive existing infrastructure, like crossings between Africa and South America. General Catalyst's president and managing director Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, who led the investment, said she sees the startup uniting the fund's two key themes of AI and resilience. "I don't worry about demand," she told TechCrunch, adding that the real question is "can you actually get this thing into space in the time that we discussed?" Meanwhile, Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, points out that "data centers have high standards for quality and redundancy," noting that making satellites optimized for data center connectivity "will be harder and take longer than most entrepreneurs suggest."

The technical challenge lies in overcoming how Earth's atmosphere distorts laser signals as they pass through it, especially when clouds block the path, and EON says it has secret sauce to address this problem. The company will concentrate on producing the optical communications terminal, carefully spending on components that must be precise, like the gimbals that point the laser, while buying powerful off-the-shelf satellite buses from manufacturers like Apex Space. EON isn't alone in chasing this market: Blue Origin has announced plans for TeraWave, a 5,048 satellite network aiming to provide speeds up to 6 terabits per second to large-scale users, though that more ambitious plan will require more time to launch and deploy. EON's smaller satellite fleet should be quicker to get into orbit, but they'll need to solve many of the same technical hurdles, including the fact that most satellite communications networks can't match the 200 terabits per second or more that undersea fiber delivers.

Horowitz frames the company's approach with a simple rule: "no physics problems," he says, emphasizing that "there's a market that exists today that we can go serve." The startup will carefully select ground stations in different regions to serve local data centers and content delivery networks, using redundant sites and weather data to ensure reliable links. They plan to sell dedicated capacity to attract customers who want full control over their data transit. The bet is straightforward: more data is moving around the planet than ever before, and that trend is only accelerating.