YC-backed Apolink by 19-year-old bags $4.3M to build 24/7 connectivity for LEO satellites

Apolink, a Y Combinator-backed space-tech startup founded by 19-year-old Indian-origin entrepreneur Onkar Singh Batra, has raised $4.3 million in an oversubscribed seed round at a $45 million valuation. The Palo Alto-based company aims to build a real-time, 24/7 connectivity network for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, addressing the persistent issue of communication dead zones when satellites lose line-of-sight with ground stations. Unlike existing solutions that rely on relay satellites or ground station networks with partial coverage, Apolink plans to deploy a constellation of 32 satellites equipped with lasers and radios to provide near-continuous connectivity with up to 99% uptime and low latency, initially 10–15 seconds, improving to 2–3 seconds over time. Batra’s approach is notable for its hybrid radio-frequency and optical architecture that is hardware-independent, enabling compatibility with satellites lacking specialized user terminals—a key limitation in current inter-satellite link