Analysis
Xona Space Systems is about to launch its first Pulsar satellites, the opening piece of a planned 258-satellite constellation meant to replace GPS with a signal precise to the centimeter instead of the meter, TechCrunch reports. A SpaceX rocket is scheduled to carry six satellites into orbit later this month: four that resemble a prototype Xona launched in 2025 using an Aerospace Labs satellite platform, and two built in-house at the company's Burlingame, California headquarters that will form the base of Pulsar itself.
Xona was founded in 2019 by five engineers who met in Stanford's aerospace engineering graduate program. CEO Brian Manning and CTO Tyler Reid lead the company; Reid's PhD thesis on using low-Earth-orbit satellites for navigation helped inspire it. The company has now raised just over $300 million from venture investors, including a $20 million stake from the U.S. Space Force.
Centimeter Precision Versus GPS's Meter-Level Signal
Pulsar is designed to reach indoors and into dense urban canyons, places GPS struggles, and the company says the signal is built to resist jamming and spoofing. Existing GPS receivers can pick up Pulsar with a relatively simple software modification rather than new hardware, which matters for adoption: TimeBeat, a timing-electronics company, is already lined up as an early pilot partner. Xona is targeting full coverage of the U.S., Europe, Japan and South Korea by 2028, once satellites are in orbit and passing over mid-latitudes roughly eight times a day.
TechCrunch's reporting doesn't name a direct commercial competitor to Xona. The comparison it draws instead is to government-built satellite navigation networks from Europe, China and Russia, which it describes as easy to jam and insufficiently precise on their own, underscoring that Xona is positioning itself as a commercial layer on top of, not a replacement for, those existing systems.
$300 million is a meaningful sum for a space-navigation startup, but it buys only six satellites in this month's launch against a planned constellation of 258. Beta testing with real customers can't begin until enough satellites are in orbit to deliver regular coverage passes, and the full U.S., European, Japanese and South Korean coverage Xona is promising by 2028 depends on securing many more launch slots than it has booked so far.
The gap between six satellites launching this month and 258 needed for full Pulsar coverage is the number to track as Xona moves from prototype to commercial service.