The Apolink team including founder Onkar Singh Batra (center front) in their Palo Alto lab. Apolink (short for “Apogee-plus-link”) is building a network to keep satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) connected around the clock.  The Y Combinator–backed startup recently closed a $4.3 million seed round (at a $45 million post-money valuation) to fund its mission.  Headed by 19-year-old CEO Onkar Batra, Apolink is tackling one of space’s toughest problems: ensuring continuous, real-time connectivity for any satellite, anywhere in orbit.

A Young Founder’s Space Journey

For Onkar Batra, Apolink grew out of a teenage passion.  Still in high school, Batra built InQube, India’s first open-source satellite, which was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation in 2022.  That experience put him face-to-face with a perennial issue: satellites frequently lose contact when they orbit out of range of a ground station.  “LEO has its own advantages,” Batra explains.  Because low-Earth orbit is much closer to ground, “closing the link between the customer satellite and our constellation is way easier… [and] the power requirements [are] limited,” making more reliable links possible.  Apolink is built on this insight: by connecting satellites to each other in orbit, the startup can bridge any coverage gap and keep even small cubesats online continuously.

Bridging the Connectivity Gap with Hybrid RF/Optical Links

Apolink’s technical solution is a constellation of 32 small satellites, each carrying both radio-frequency and laser transmitters.  Instead of relying on dozens of new ground stations or special terminals on each satellite, the network uses a hybrid RF/optical architecture.  As Batra puts it, “We solve this [through] our hybrid-RF optical architecture and no user terminal, hardware-independent approach”.  In practice, this means an end satellite only needs a basic radio to plug into Apolink’s network – Apolink’s own satellites handle the heavy lifting of relaying data.  The company even holds its own FCC spectrum license and builds its laser and radio components in-house to ensure full compatibility.  A test satellite (“LinkONE/IPoS”) is slated for launch on a SpaceX rideshare in 2026, paving the way for the full 32-satellite constellation by 2029.

Funding, Growth, and Early Success

Founded in 2024, Apolink quickly attracted investors.  Its oversubscribed seed round was led by Y Combinator, and included VCs such as 468 Capital and Unshackled Ventures.  More importantly, Apolink has already secured over $140 million in letters of intent from satellite operators and Earth-observation firms eager for continuous links.  Those early partners include companies working in remote sensing and commercial satellites that need reliable data downlinks.  Remarkably, Apolink has achieved this traction with just a four-person core team (all veterans from companies like Maxar, Audacy, and Astra) working in a 4,000 square-foot lab in Palo Alto.  With seed funds in hand, the startup is rapidly prototyping its system and preparing demonstrations to prove the concept.

The Satellite Internet Frontier

Apolink’s ambitions come at a time of explosive growth in space.  Goldman Sachs Research estimates around 70,000 LEO satellites will be launched over the next five years, potentially growing the global satellite market to $108 billion by 2035.  This boom is driven by everything from global broadband constellations to IoT and scientific missions.  But it also highlights the industry’s challenges: LEO satellites have narrow coverage zones, meaning massive constellations and clever networking are needed for true global service.  Analysts note that obstacles like temporary “dark zones” – where a satellite has no line of sight to a ground station – still need to be solved.  Apolink’s platform directly addresses these gaps.  By dedicating a constellation solely to inter-satellite relaying, it promises near-continuous coverage (aiming for “almost 99% uptime” between ground and LEO satellites).  In Batra’s words, existing inter-satellite links often focus on expensive optics or limited band and “do not guarantee a 24/7 link.”  Apolink’s software-defined radio/laser mesh, by contrast, is designed from the start for always-on compatibility.

Looking Ahead

In less than a year Apolink has gone from a bold idea to a fully funded startup on the launchpad.  The company’s progress illustrates how entrepreneurial ingenuity can reshape a mature industry.  By combining cutting-edge optics with a lean, problem-solving mindset, Batra and his team are striving to turn a persistent space communications challenge into a solvable engineering problem.  If their network succeeds, it would mark a shift in how satellites talk to Earth – making persistent, “dark-zone–free” connectivity routine.  Apolink’s story shows that even small teams led by young founders can tackle big sky problems, and that the next revolution in satellite internet may come from a 19-year-old’s vision as much as from established space incumbents.