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

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

The joint venture, called Orbitworks, will be the first commercial company in the United Arab Emirates to mass-produce satellites. It will be majority owned by Marlan Space, a new space company affiliated with International Holding Company. IHC itself is majority controlled by the Royal Group, a conglomerate owned by Abu Dhabi’s ruling royal family.

The United Arab Emirates has big ambitions in space—and sufficient resources to fund them. The UAE Space Agency (UAESA) is less than a decade old, but the government has invested billions in domestic capabilities and built partnerships with other countries and commercial players. The UAE sent its first astronaut (or privately funded “space participant,” as NASA calls it) to the ISS in 2019; two years later, it became the latest member of a very small group of nations to put a probe into Mars orbit.

The Gulf state’s space ecosystem includes several other key players besides the UAESA: Space42, a merger of Emirati satellite company Yahsat and data analytics firm Bayanat; EDGE Group, a large industrial company; and a handful of universities and research institutes such as the National Space and Science Technology Center. The country is at the point where it wants to deploy satellite constellations and bring satellite manufacturing in-house.

Pierre-Damien Vaujour, CEO of Loft Orbital, said in a recent interview that he has long been interested in the UAE’s space ecosystem: “From the very beginning, when I founded Loft, I had in mind that I wanted to start activities in the UAE and contribute to the ecosystem there.”

San Francisco-based Loft buys satellite buses in bulk and flies payloads for customers, using a standardized modular payload adapter that integrates the customer’s hardware into the spacecraft. Loft handles all launch integration and operates the spacecraft once it reaches orbit. The startup can also conduct “virtual missions,” where customers can deploy applications in orbit that use onboard sensors, computers and cameras.

Vaujour said Loft’s flexible hardware will allow the joint venture to work with a variety of new players in the Middle East space ecosystem. “Loft can work with any payload supplier, any bus or subsystem provider, any ground station provider, any cloud provider… We are providing the joint venture with the playbook for production, operations and technology for satellites,” he said.

Orbitworks plans to produce up to 50 satellites weighing 500 kilograms per year. The hardware for the first ten satellites has already been procured. The company will operate in a 4,600 square meter facility in Abu Dhabi. The first satellite platform is scheduled to be assembled, integrated and tested there in early 2025.

Vaujour said the startup has crafted its agreements with Marlan so that Loft will continue to comply with U.S. regulations and export licenses. Loft’s standalone company, Loft Federal, will continue to perform work on classified contracts for U.S. national security clients.

“This newly created company has the mission to become the national pioneer in the production and operation of satellite constellations, and that is quite new,” said Vaujour. “We are starting on a small scale, but the idea is to scale it up to another level. The ambitions of the country, the region and the world for something like this are quite big.”