Loft Orbital forms joint venture with UAE-based company to boost satellite production in the Middle East

A holding company linked to the Emirati royal family is investing in a brand new joint venture between Abu Dhabi-based Marlan Space and a startup Orbital Loft with over $100 million to expand domestic satellite manufacturing capabilities in the region.

A joint venture called Orbitworkswill likely be the first business company in the UAE to mass-produce satellites. The majority shareholder is Marlan Space, a brand new space company affiliated with International Holding Company. IHC is majority-controlled by Royal Group, a conglomerate owned by Abu Dhabi’s ruling royal family.

The UAE has big space ambitions—and deep pockets to fund them. The UAE Space Agency (UAESA) has been around for lower than a decade, but the government has spent billions investing in domestic capabilities and forging partnerships with other countries and business entities. The UAE sent its first astronaut (or privately funded “spaceflight participant,” as NASA calls it) to the ISS in 2019; two years later, it became the latest in a really small group of nations to put a probe in orbit around Mars.

The Gulf nation’s space ecosystem has several key players beyond UAE: Space42, a merger of Emirati satellite company Yahsat and data analytics firm Bayanat; EDGE Group, a serious industrialist; and a handful of universities and research institutions, similar to the National Space and Science Technology Center. The country is at some extent where it wants to deploy satellite constellations and produce satellite manufacturing capabilities domestically.

Loft Orbital CEO Pierre-Damien Vaujour said in a recent interview that he has long been interested in the UAE’s space ecosystem: “Even when we founded Loft, I always thought that I wanted to start a business in the UAE and contribute to the development of the ecosystem there.”

San Francisco-based Loft buys satellite buses in bulk and carries payloads for patrons using a typical modular payload adapter that integrates customer equipment with the spacecraft. Loft handles all launch integration and services the spacecraft once it reaches orbit. The startup may perform “virtual missions,” where customers can deploy applications in orbit that use onboard sensors, computers and cameras.

Vaujour said Loft’s flexible hardware will enable the joint venture to work with a wide selection of latest players in the Middle East’s space ecosystem. “Loft can work with any payload provider, any trunk or subsystem provider, any ground station provider, any cloud provider… We provide the joint venture with a playbook for satellite manufacturing, operations and technology,” he said.

Orbitworks intends to produce up to fifty 500-kilogram satellites per 12 months, with equipment for the first ten satellites already purchased. It will operate from a 50,000-square-foot facility in Abu Dhabi, with the first satellite platform to be assembled, integrated, and tested there by early 2025.

Vaujour said the startup has entered into agreements with Marlan to ensure Loft complies with U.S. export regulations and licenses. A separate Loft entity, Loft Federal, will proceed to provide work for classified contracts for U.S. national security clients.

“This entity that was created has a mandate to become the national champion in the country in terms of manufacturing and operating satellite constellations, and this is something that is quite new,” Vaujour said. “Although we are starting small, the idea is to scale it up. The ambitions, both nationally, regionally and internationally, for something like this are quite big.”