Marlan Space and Loft Orbital lead $1B investment to expand AI satellite constellation to 50 spacecraft

A consortium led by UAE-based Marlan Space and US-French startup Loft Orbital just committed $1B to scale an AI-powered satellite constellation from 10 spacecraft to 50. The Royal Group of Abu Dhabi is bankrolling the expansion, and the first satellite is slated to reach orbit by October 2026. The announcement, made at the International Space Summit in Paris on September 9, represents one of the largest single investments in commercial Earth observation infrastructure this year. It also marks a deliberate push by Abu Dhabi to build sovereign space capabilities rather than simply buying imagery from Western providers. What the Altair constellation actually does The expanded Altair constellation won’t just take pretty pictures of Earth from orbit. Each satellite carries onboard AI designed to process optical, hyperspectral, thermal, infrared, and radar data before it ever reaches a ground station. Traditional Earth observation satellites collect raw data, beam it down, and leave the heavy analytical lifting to ground-based systems. Altair’s architecture compresses that timeline to seconds, delivering alerts from orbit in near-real-time. The constellation’s target customers sit primar...