Starlink Veterans Launch Eclipse Space
Plans Megaconstellation Technology for Nations and Enterprises
A new satellite infrastructure company founded by engineers who built and scaled Starlink has entered the market, targeting nations and commercial enterprises seeking to own and operate their own communications constellations.
“We founded Eclipse on the belief that megaconstellation technology should not be the exclusive domain of trillion-dollar companies and centibillionaires.”
Derek Huerta, Eclipse Space
Eclipse Space, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, made its public debut last week at the Space Capital Summit at Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City. The company says it delivers full turnkey constellation infrastructure — satellites, payloads, ground segment, launch, and operations — to customers that have historically lacked the capital or expertise to build at scale.
“We founded Eclipse on the belief that megaconstellation technology should not be the exclusive domain of trillion-dollar companies and centibillionaires,” said Derek Huerta, CEO and co-founder of Eclipse Space. “Until now, building a megaconstellation has required either enormous capital investment or dependence on someone else’s infrastructure, with all the strategic vulnerability that comes with it.”
Eclipse is backed by Space Capital, Tectonic Ventures, and Ubiquity Ventures. The company reports active engagement with nation-state customers across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as commercial customers in telecom, connectivity, and satellite services. First hardware deliveries are targeted for later this year.
To accelerate its engineering capability, Eclipse is launching with a strategic acquisition of the engineering team behind Rendered.ai’s Agent Studio, along with an exclusive license to develop the platform and an option to acquire its underlying technology. The company says the deal brings a specialized AI engineering team in-house and pairs it with its satellite, electrical, mechanical, and RF engineers to build tools aimed at designing, customizing, and optimizing large-scale space systems.
Most companies applying AI to engineering use it to help software teams write code. Eclipse says it is building purpose-built tools for spacecraft design — infrastructure it says must be tailored to the engineering itself rather than drawn from generic models.
Eclipse describes its business model as fabless: it owns the architecture, design, and software stack while drawing on a global network of manufacturing and integration partners across North America, Europe, and Asia. The company says the model supports a minimum production rate of five satellites per day. For nation-state customers, Eclipse says it replicates that model regionally by standing up in-country production lines with local manufacturing partners.
Chad Anderson, CEO of Space Capital, said the company is well-positioned to execute on its vision. “It is only fitting that the team that made Starlink the world’s most successful satellite constellation is now applying that expertise to bring that capability to the rest of the world,” Anderson said.
Eclipse’s demonstration satellite is targeted for launch in 2027.