Yahsat and Bayanat forge AI-powered space technology champion

TAMPA, Fla. — Emirati satellite operator Yahsat and geospatial artificial intelligence provider Bayanat completed their merger Oct. 1, forming a company called Space42 valued at about $3 billion on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.

Shares in the space technology group ended their first trading session on the stock exchange flat at 2.38 dirhams after rising earlier in the day.

Led by Karim Sabbagh, a former CEO of multi-orbit satellite operator SES, Space42 aims to develop hybrid connectivity and geospatial services to meet demand from autonomous vehicles and other emerging capabilities.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel,” Sabbagh said in an interview with SpaceNews, “we’re simply taking what we are good at today and thinking about scaling it up.”

Space42 has around 700 employees across more than 150 countries, with around two-thirds coming from the legacy Yahsat business now operating as a division called Space Services. 

Ali Al Hashemi, Yahsat’s former CEO, is leading Space Services and is responsible for Space42’s upstream fixed and mobility satellite operations and services.

Space42 operates five geostationary satellites for communications and broadcast services and has plans for three more from Airbus: Thuraya 4 slated to launch in November for its L-band mobile connectivity business and Al Yah 4 and Al Yah 5, broadband spacecraft due to launch in 2027 and 2028, respectively.

The UAE government has committed to buy $5.1 billion worth of broadband services from the company until at least 2043, mainly from Al Yah 4 and Al Yah 5.

Space42 also has a pair of low Earth orbit spacecraft on order from Airbus for a multi-orbit strategy the company is still keeping under wraps.

Former Bayanat managing director Hasan Al Hosani is leading Space42’s second business unit: Smart Solutions, overseeing data generation and processing via the company’s gIQ AI-driven intelligence platform.

Evolving space

Space42 is backed by UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, which was already invested in Bayanat’s parent company G42, a UAE-based AI and cloud provider, and Yahsat.

Yahsat and Bayanat had previously teamed up to order seven UAE-focused synthetic aperture radar satellites from Finland’s Iceye.

In August, Iceye announced SpaceX had deployed the first spacecraft under this partnership.

Sabbagh said bringing both companies under one roof will help the group develop and sell more deeply integrated satellite communications and geospatial services.

Hybrid satcom and georeference data will be important for autonomous vehicles in the commercial and government markets, according to Sabbagh.

“There will remain unique applications in satcom and geospatial,” he said, “but there will be a growing intersection in the middle, and I would like to think that we’re positioning ourselves quite well for that intersection.”

There are “a lot of common elements” in the design of communications and geospatial spacecraft, he added, “and so you don’t have to go and reinvent the supply chain between these two domains.”

Space42 also expects it to be easier to leverage AI capabilities across satcom and geospatial analytics when holistically developed.

While Sabbagh said AI’s role in analyzing the rapidly expanding volume of geospatial data has recently gained prominence, he said its potential to enhance network optimization, predictive maintenance, and interference management within the satcom sector is just beginning to emerge.

However, he noted that AI-powered satcom-geospatial integration remains in its early stages.

“It’s still nascent,” he continued. “This is not mainstream, but it is growing as we see it … because of the growing use cases that are before us.”

Space42 expects to release more details about its growth strategy later this year after convening its first board meeting as a combined company in the coming weeks.

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