Endeavor Optical Networks (EON) is taking aim at optical connectivity between orbital data centers with plans for a network of satellites feeding space-to-ground links transmitting data at 2.4 Tb/s.

EON was founded in May and just emerged from stealth with a $10.75 million seed round co-led by General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz. The seed round also included participation from Main Object, XYZ Venture Capital, and Upfront Ventures.

EON will use its seed funding to build an optics lab, hire engineers, manufacture an optical terminal, buy a satellite bus, and run ground tests to build a prototype before the end of 2027, and commercial plans by the end of 2029.

“The vast majority of the world’s data still runs through thousands of miles of a few hundred cables on the ocean floor," EON CEO Charlie Horowitz wrote in a post on LinkedIn. "Cut by anchors. Sabotaged amid rising geopolitical instability. Fought over in contested waters. We’re building the alternative: A network linking ground stations and tens of relay satellites in orbit, moving multiple terabits per second between continents, removed from the risks subsea cables face today."

Horowitz was previously Apex Space’s chief of staff before becoming director of special projects under CEO Ian Cinnamon. “Charlie is a force of nature,” Cinnamon told press. “He can move seamlessly from strategy to the details required.”

EON seeks to establish optical ground stations in strategic regions to serve local data centers and content delivery networks (CDNs). The company plans to leverage weather data to determine the most optimal downlink path to transport information through existing terrestrial fiber.

Gartner VP Bill Ray noted the difficulty of moving orbital data center information down to Earth as one of many fundamental obstacles to the technology, which he described as “peak insanity” in February. Although EON has a strategy to address the barriers in space-to-ground optical transmission, its founders claim no innovative new way to pierce the atmosphere, with Horowitz stating the company’s one rule is “no physics problems.”

Current systems include Starlink’s mini laser terminals that can shift data at 25 Gb/s; Blue Origin's plans to orbit its TeraWave 5,408-satellite constellation that can support a combined 6 Tb/s network; and Observable Space, which recently raised $90 million in a Series A led by Lux Capital to fund an optical space internet platform.

EON co-Founder and CTO Tyler Presser is an astronautical engineer who has planned frontier missions for NASA and comes from Advance Space. EON also employs Michael David Francois, a long-time Google executive specializing in global network infrastructure, and Wesley Baxter, an optics engineer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with experience working with Amazon Leo.