Slingshot Aerospace

Slingshot Aerospace sells the software layer for keeping track of what happens in orbit. Some of the pieces came by acquisition in 2022: Numerica's global network of optical telescopes, which observe satellites in daylight as well as darkness, and Seradata's launch and satellite database. On top sit its own services, conjunction coordination through Beacon, an AI system called Agatha that picks out satellites behaving oddly inside large constellations, and since April 2026 a consolidated operations platform called Portal.

The bet is that as orbits crowd, the durable business is being the data and decision layer that operators and governments trust, while others own the satellites. Buyers so far are mostly governments. The US Space Force awarded it a space-warfare training environment contract in January 2026, and the UK Space Agency picked it in late 2025 to build thirteen optical sensor systems across five sites.

The field is competitive from every side. LeoLabs tracks with radar, ExoAnalytic with its own telescopes, COMSPOC sells coordination software, and the US government hands out basic conjunction data free through TraCSS. Slingshot also went through a reset in 2023 and 2024, when co-founder Melanie Stricklan resigned and Tim Solms, from Microsoft and Dell, took over, steering the company deeper into defense. The sensors, databases and contracts are independently reported; how much room a private decision layer has between government sensors above it and free government data below is the open question.