Ubotica
Dublin-founded on-orbit AI company building edge-processing hardware and software that lets small satellites autonomously detect and act on Earth-observation data in real time.
Background
Ubotica was founded in Dublin in 2016 by Fintan Buckley, John Bourke, and Aubrey Dunne, with Buckley serving as CEO.
The company emerged from the premise that ground-based data downlink creates unacceptable latency for time-sensitive intelligence tasks, and that compute should move to the satellite itself.
The core product line is the CogniSAT family — CogniSAT CRC, XE1, XE2, and NEI — purpose-built AI processing units for small satellites and CubeSats.
These run Ubotica's SPACE:AI software stack, described as flight-proven onboard AI infrastructure capable of autonomous object detection, classification, and tasking without waiting for a ground pass.
Ubotica sells into both commercial Earth-observation and defense-adjacent markets, partnering with satellite integrators and constellation operators rather than operating its own birds.
Headcount sits in the 11–50 range. Key integrations include NASA JPL and Open Cosmos on the FAME mission (April 2026) and Texas-based NOVI Space on the GENIE constellation platform (announced May 18, 2026).