A commercial GPS layer in low Earth orbit

Xona is building Pulsar, a planned 258-satellite navigation constellation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) delivering navigation signals that arrive at ground receivers with 20 to 30+ dB higher power(100x to 1,000x greater signal intensity) than legacy GPS L1/L2 and military M-Code broadcasts.  Xona isn’t pitching Pulsar as a replacement for GPS but as a second layer, in a different orbit, that receivers use alongside it. 

Xona Space Systems was founded in 2019 by Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics graduates with backgrounds at SpaceX, Blue Origin, Maxar, and Stanford's GPS Research Lab.  In May 2022 the company built and flew its first demonstrator, Huginn, on SpaceX's Transporter-5.

Pulsar-0, the company’s first production class satellite built by Belgium's Aerospacelab, followed on Transporter-14 in June 2025. By October 2026 it had logged more than 500 transmission passes and in January 2026, Xona ordered eight more satellites from Aerospacelab. 

Importantly, the FCC granted Xona an RNSS (radionavigation-satellite service) license, which gives them permission to operate a satellite navigation system that broadcasts in the bands set aside for navigation satellites. 

On Oct. 20 the first six production satellites deployed on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5: four on Aerospacelab buses and two built at their new factory in Burlingame. 

On October 22, 2026, Xona then announced an oversubscribed $250 million Series D financing round at a post-money valuation of $2.45 billion, led by longtime SpaceX board member Steve Jurvetson’s Future Ventures. Total raised: more than $570 million.

Total federal obligations to date: $7.82 million, all SBIR. The program most likely to buy Pulsar, Resilient GPS, was cancelled in January.

So who pays for a new GPS when the old one is free?

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