Xona's $300M GPS Rival Goes Live With Six Satellites This Month

Six satellites launch this month to switch on the first precision commercial alternative to GPS. The spacecraft, built by startup Xona Space Systems, ride a SpaceX rocket into orbit later this month and open beta-testing of a paid navigation service that competes with signals governments give away for free.

Xona has raised just over $300 million from venture investors since its founding in 2019, including $20 million from the U.S. Space Force. The company plans a 258-satellite operational constellation, called Pulsar, with full coverage in the U.S., Europe, Japan and South Korea by 2028.

Five engineers who met in Stanford University's aerospace engineering graduate program founded the company. One of them, Tyler Reid, wrote his PhD thesis on using low-earth-orbit satellites to improve navigation; he now serves as CTO after working on self-driving cars at Ford.

Why take on a free government service?

CEO Brian Manning's first reaction, he told TechCrunch during a visit to Xona's Burlingame, California, headquarters, was skepticism. The idea came up over "pizza and beer chats" among the founders.

"My knee jerk was like, this is dumb," Manning said. "Why would anybody replace GPS? It's free, right? And I started digging into it. People think of GPS as a free service, but the market isn't the service. The market's the hardware, and you have billions of devices being sold every year; those things aren't being given away for free. There's an immense market that is desperately looking for better performance."

GPS and the analog networks built by Europe, China and Russia share two weaknesses: they're easy to jam, and their meter-level precision isn't enough for applications like farming robots or self-driving cars.

What does the technology actually solve?

Xona cleared two technical hurdles. First, its satellites keep time without expensive onboard atomic clocks, leaning on the spacecraft's proximity to Earth and constant communication with ground-based sources of truth. Second, existing GPS receivers can pick up Xona's signal with a relatively simple software modification — giving the company immediate market access and smoothing the regulatory path for broadcasting navigation signals.

Pulsar will deliver centimeter-level geolocation precision, versus GPS's meter-level accuracy, according to the company. Its signal is strong enough to be detected inside buildings and in urban environments, and Manning believes it's powerful enough to deter jammers and spoofers.

Four of the six satellites launching this month resemble a prototype Xona launched last year that proved the technology; they're built around a platform from Aerospace Labs. Xona built the other two entirely in-house at its Burlingame headquarters, and they're intended as the foundation for the Pulsar constellation.

When can customers use it?

Beta-testing with real customers begins once the satellites orbit overhead through the mid-latitudes about eight times a day. Ian Gough, CEO of electronic timing specialist TimeBeat, says the initial pilot will let his engineers check and correct the timing provided by its devices around the world.

The U.S. government's interest is explicit. Jamming and spoofing of satellite navigation services have become increasingly common in conflicts, and the Space Force's $20 million stake signals demand beyond commercial markets.

Reid's self-driving work at Ford convinced him that a service like Pulsar is necessary to realize autonomous vehicles of all stripes. Manning frames the ambition through the window of Xona's headquarters, which overlooks planes landing at San Francisco International Airport.

"All the forms of mass transportation, the gold standard for safety is civil aviation," Manning said. "We see Xona and what we're building being able to play a big part in that … to provide the service to a car, so you can feel as safe taking your hands off the wheel as you are laying back in an airliner."

If the beta validates Pulsar's precision claims, Xona's 2028 coverage deadline becomes the next test — scaling from six satellites to 258.