Rebuilding the Foundations of Progress

When most people hear “GPS,” they think of the blue dot on a map. But behind that dot is one of the most important inventions of the modern world.

What began as a Cold War military project eventually grew into a global utility. Today, GPS is essential to our way of life. Without it, planes wouldn’t navigate with reliability, crops wouldn’t be harvested, shipping containers wouldn’t arrive on time, and financial markets wouldn’t be trustworthy. Over the decades since it was launched, GPS became the invisible infrastructure that stitches our digital and physical worlds together.

But the system we rely on was built for a different era. Today’s GPS satellites are masterpieces of engineering. However, the lengthy contracting, design, and build cycles mean new capabilities can take decades to reach users. Meanwhile, threats and needs are evolving on the scale of years, months, or even weeks as we’ve seen in recent conflict zones, leaving a critical gap between what’s needed and what’s available. Other nations are rapidly modernizing their navigation systems, while the U.S. falls behind without a GPS backup that meets the demands of a fast-evolving world.

We started Xona to change that.

Today, we’re announcing a total of $92 million in new unannounced funding. This includes our Series B round led by Craft Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Stellar Ventures, Seraphim Ventures, Toyota Ventures, First Spark, Industrious Ventures, Future Ventures, and NGP Capital. Sky Dayton of Craft Ventures will join Xona’s board.

Our Series B joins $20 million in non-dilutive funding through our Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) award from SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the United States Space Force.

This brings Xona’s total funding to date to over $150 million.

With these new resources, Xona is able to accelerate our shift from research and development into delivery at scale, moving from a single satellite to hundreds in orbit in the coming years.

Launching Pulsar

Our vision is straightforward: make satellite navigation dramatically more accurate, secure, and available. That means rebuilding it from the ground up in Low Earth Orbit.

Earlier this week we made important progress towards this goal with the launch of Pulsar-0, the first production-class satellite in our Low Earth Orbit constellation that will bring unmatched accuracy and affordable resiliency to industries across defense, construction, agriculture, mining, critical infrastructure, IoT, mass mobile, logistics, and automotive—and that’s just the start.

Pulsar is the next generation of location and time. It’s the first commercial navigation service of its kind:

• 100x signal strength brings coverage where today’s GPS fails – underneath dense foliage, in GPS jammed environments, and even into trucks, warehouses, and many buildings.

• Centimeter-level precision reliably delivers the native accuracy to enable the mass adoption of autonomy and robotics to the general public

• Encrypted, authenticated signals resilient to spoofing and intentional interference withstand modern threats becoming commonplace in contested regions

• Low Earth Orbit architecture delivers unmatched performance and multipath resistance in challenging environments like urban canyons.

In 2022, we proved that a new model for positioning, navigation, and timing was possible with Huginn, the world’s first commercial navigation satellite in Low Earth Orbit. In 2026, we’ll begin launching our first batch of production-operational satellites that will enable service with our earliest customers.

Now we’ll be able to move faster: bringing more satellites online, onboarding early customers, and accelerating our manufacturing capacity to support our full constellation with hundreds of satellites in orbit over the next few years.

Accelerating Our Scale

Behind every satellite we launch is a growing team of engineers, operators, and builders who are redefining what’s possible.

But what we’re building goes far beyond the satellites themselves. It’s an entirely new layer of infrastructure that requires world-class talent across mission operations, ground systems, signal processing, customer success, go-to-market, and more. If you’re driven by tough technical problems, inspired by building what the world needs next, or looking to join a mission with real stakes—this is your moment.

The Road Ahead

Navigation and timing are systems the world isn’t supposed to think about. They’re just supposed to work. They underpin every transaction, every journey, every machine that moves with precision or autonomy

When they fail, everything around them will too.

But when they’re strong, progress accelerates.

That’s the bar. That’s what we’ve built.

Now, we scale.

— Brian