Soon, your cloud photo backups could reside on beams of sunshine transmitted between satellites rather than in huge, power-hungry server farms here on Earth. Startup LyteLoop has spent the past five years tackling the physics challenges which will make that possible, and now it’s raised $40 million to assist it leapfrog the remaining engineering hurdles to form its bold vision a reality.
LyteLoop’s new funding will provide it with enough runway to realize its next major milestone: putting into orbit within subsequent three years three prototype satellites equipped with its novel data storage technology. the corporate intends to create and launch six of those, which can demonstrate how its laser-based data-storage medium operates on orbit.
Harlev said five years into its founding, the corporate is extremely confident within the science that underlies its data storage methods — and thrilled about the benefits it could offer over traditional data warehousing technology used today. Security, as an example, gets an enormous boost from LyteLoop’s storage paradigm.
He said that everybody on every single data center has a comparable same possible maximum level of knowledge security. “We can provide an additional four layers of cybersecurity, and they’re all physics-based. Anything which will be applied on Earth, we will apply in our data center, except for example, the very fact that we’re storing data on photons, we could put in quantum encryption, which others can’t. Plus, there are big security benefits because the info is in motion, in space, and moving at the speed of sunshine.”
On top of security, LyteLoop’s model also offers benefits when it involves privacy, because the info it’s storing is technically always in transit between satellites, which suggests it’ll be subject to a completely different set of regulations versus people who inherit play when you’re talking about data which is warehoused on drives in storage facilities. LyteLoop also claims advantages in terms of access, because the storage and the network are one within the same, with the satellites ready to provide their information to ground stations anywhere on Earth. Harlev identified that it’s unbelievable power efficient, and also naturally sound in terms of not requiring millions of gallons of water for cooling, both significant downsides of our current data center storage practices.
On top of all of that, Harlev says that LyteLoop’s storage won’t only be cost-competitive with current cloud-based storage solutions, but will actually be cheaper — even without factoring in likely decreases to return in launch costs as SpaceX iterates on its own technology and more small satellite launch providers, including Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab, come online and expand their capacity.
He said that although it’s costlier to create and launch the satellite, it’s still tons cheaper to take care of them within the space. So once we do a complete cost of ownership calculation, we are cheaper, considerably cheaper, on a complete cost of ownership basis. However, once we compare what the particular users can do, you know, we will definitely attend completely different pricing model.
Harlev is pertaining to the likelihood of bundled pricing for combining storage and delivery — other providers would require that you simply supply the network, as an example, so as to move the info you’re storing. LyteLoop’s technology could also offset existing spend on reducing a company’s carbon footprint, due to its much-reduced ecological impact.
The company is concentrated squarely on getting its satellites to plug, with an idea to require its proof of concept and expand that to a full production satellite roughly five years from now, with an initial service offering made available at that point. But LyteLoop’s tech could have equally exciting applications here on Earth. Harlev says that if you created a LyteLoop data center roughly the dimensions of a gridiron, it might be roughly 500 times as efficient at storing data versus traditional data warehousing.
The startup’s technology, which essentially stores data on photons rather than physical media, just requires far less matter than do our current ways of doing things, which not only helps its environmental impact, but which also makes it a way more sensible course for in-space storage in comparison to physical media. The launch business is all about optimizing mass to orbit so as to scale back costs, and, as Harlev notes, photons are massless.
