Xona Raises $250 Million to Build a Commercial GPS Alternative
Xona says GPS’s limitations are becoming more consequential as autonomous vehicles, drones, robotics and other systems rely on precise location with less human oversight. CEO and co-founder Brian Manning argues that smaller, lower-cost satellites in a closer orbit can improve navigation while working with existing GPS devices through software updates. The company has raised $250 million at a $2.45 billion valuation to build and launch its network after receiving FCC approval to operate alongside GPS.
Xona is building a closer, lower-cost navigation network
GPS works for everyday use, but Brian Manning says it does not provide the precision, power and protection needed for systems expected to operate with less human control. He said the problem became clear to Xona’s team through work in autonomous cars, but extends to agriculture, drones, robotics and defense—fields whose systems depend on location and time.
Xona’s proposed answer is a commercial satellite navigation network designed to upgrade GPS. Manning said two breakthroughs enabled the company’s approach, though he described one in detail: building high-performance satellites at a fraction of the cost of traditional GPS spacecraft. He characterized those older satellites as large systems costing hundreds of millions of dollars each. Xona aims to build its smaller satellites for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece at scale, in the factory where he was speaking.
“We figured out how to provide extremely high performance from small satellites that we can actually build for hundreds of thousands of dollars at scale instead of hundreds of millions of dollars,” Manning said.
The satellites’ size and cost are tied to their operating distance. Manning said traditional GPS satellites are more than 20,000 kilometers from Earth, while Xona’s satellites are 20 times closer. He argued that the closer orbit enables substantially better performance than legacy systems.
The network’s usefulness also depends on compatibility with devices already in the field. Manning said Xona’s service is intended to integrate with billions of GPS devices without changing their hardware, through software updates instead. That makes spectrum sharing central to the product, not just a regulatory hurdle.
Spectrum approval clears a regulatory hurdle, not the deployment work
Manning called spectrum rights one of the main bottlenecks for companies in this area, because spectrum is a limited resource. He said Xona had spent more than five years coordinating how to share GPS spectrum without causing interference. In August, the company received full FCC approval for its network, which he described as the final regulatory piece needed to deploy at scale and begin turning on customers.
The on-screen company fact panel described the approval as permission to operate alongside nation-state systems. Manning’s account tied spectrum sharing to the intended compatibility with existing GPS devices: users would not need new hardware, he said, only software updates.
Approval does not itself provide service. Xona still needs to build and launch satellites, and Manning said the new financing would support that work.
More satellites are the immediate constraint on service
The $250 million round, at a $2.45 billion valuation, will fund more satellite production, launches, global service deployment and expanded capabilities, Manning said. He described the financing as arriving after Xona launched six satellites on the Tuesday before the interview. Those were among the first satellites that, he said, would begin providing the world’s first commercial satellite navigation service.
Manning said Xona had a substantial backlog of commercial and government customers waiting for satellites to be in the air. The company’s next step is to build and deploy more spacecraft so it can expand the service.
An on-screen company fact panel set an early commercial service target of 2027. That is a target, while the launches and FCC approval are steps toward deployment; Manning said the new capital would support further production and service expansion.