Deployment has outrun operations.
Annual satellite deployment has grown roughly ninefold since 2019. The systems for coordinating, maneuvering, and sustaining those fleets have not grown with them.
GenLab · Orbital Infrastructure Fund
Space is scaling faster than the infrastructure beneath it.
Launch gets you to orbit. Operating there requires four foundational capabilities — navigation, sensing, autonomy, and logistics. We invest in the companies building those rails.
GPS defined navigation. Cloud defined compute. Launch defined access to orbit. The companies that define control will own what comes next.
The GenLab thesis
01The Problem
Orbit is becoming crowded, contested, and economically decisive.
The buildout is no longer speculative — it is contracted, funded, and accelerating. What hasn't kept pace is the infrastructure required to operate at that scale.
329
Orbital launches in 2025 — an all-time record
4,500+
Satellites deployed in 2025, up 54% year over year
13,000+
Active satellites on orbit entering 2026
$1.8T
Projected space economy by 2035
Sources: BryceTech · Jonathan's Space Report · McKinsey & Company
Orbit is now an operational theater.
Resilience, maneuverability, and control in space are no longer research priorities — they are matters of national capability for the United States and its allies.
Launch is solved. Operations are not.
Launch costs fell more than 90% in a decade. Access is no longer the constraint. The hard problems — and the durable value — moved up the stack.
02The Thesis
Launch gets you there. Four capabilities let you stay.
Every operational system in orbit depends on the same foundational layers. They are the rails of the orbital economy — and they are where we invest.
CAP / 01
Navigation
Position, timing, and control in environments where GPS doesn't reach. The layer every other system in orbit depends on.
PNT · GPS-denied · Mission control
CAP / 02
Sensing
Persistent awareness of what is happening in orbit and on Earth — perception, characterization, and intelligence at machine speed.
Perception · Domain awareness · Intelligence
CAP / 03
Autonomy
Systems that route, coordinate, and defend themselves. Human direction, machine execution — because orbit doesn't wait for a ground station.
Edge compute · Command & control · Teaming
CAP / 04
Logistics
Movement, servicing, manufacturing, and the industrial supply chains that sustain operations in orbit — and the capital systems behind them.
Servicing · Manufacturing · Supply chain
03Posture
Defense-forward. Dual-use by design. Built with allies.
We are American investors aligned with U.S. space and defense priorities — and we work where our allies build, from Berlin to Tokyo to Brussels.
Aligned with the mission.
Our companies work inside American space and defense programs. We invest where national capability and commercial markets reinforce each other.
Two markets, one system.
Every investment must serve both a government mission and a commercial market. Dual-use revenue is a requirement, not a bonus.
Allied by conviction.
Space infrastructure is being built across the alliance. We maintain working relationships in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and across NATO.
US
United States
DE
Germany
JP
Japan
UK
United Kingdom
NATO
Alliance Programs
04Portfolio
One studio launch. A portfolio of investments.
Companies across space, autonomy, intelligence, and the infrastructure beneath them.
05The Firm
Operators inside the environments where orbital infrastructure is defined.
GenLab is led by operators who have built infrastructure their entire careers — from the early web through the Department of Energy's national laboratories and NASA's programs. We have watched the same pattern repeat for thirty years: new technology deploys, infrastructure forms beneath it, and an industry matures.
Orbit is that pattern, happening again. We don't evaluate it from the outside — we work where it is being built.
Contact
Building in navigation, sensing, autonomy, or logistics?
We want to hear from founders building the rails of the orbital economy — and from institutions that think in decades.