Check out Valley of Depth #034 on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
In this episode of Valley of Depth, we dive into Aalyria’s newly announced $100 million raise at a $1.3 billion valuation with cofounder and CTO Brian Barritt and unpack why investors are betting big on the future of networks that don’t sit still.
Aalyria is building two core technologies born inside Google: Spacetime, a software orchestration layer designed to manage networks in motion, and Tightbeam, a laser communications system delivering fiber-like speeds through the atmosphere. Together, they aim to solve one of the hardest infrastructure challenges in aerospace and defense: how to coordinate satellites, aircraft, drones, ships, and ground systems into a seamless “network of networks.”
The conversation spans laser physics, diffraction challenges in space-to-ground links, feeder link bottlenecks in mega-constellations, and why routing data across moving infrastructure is fundamentally different than routing across fixed networks.
We cover:
- Why Aalyria’s $100M raise signals a shift from R&D to deployment
- What “network in motion” really means and why it’s so hard
- How laser communications can reach 100 gigabits per second through atmosphere
- The technical challenge of Earth-to-space vs. space-to-Earth optical links
- Why interoperability has been a 40-year ambition inside the DoD
- How open APIs could become the connective tissue for JADC2 and beyond
- What resilience and roaming look like in hybrid satellite architectures
- Why optical ground stations require orchestration software to scale