Kepler Communications: Building Canada’s space infrastructure

The largest orbital computing cluster in space

Building a satellite company requires more than technical ingenuity—it demands patient capital that is willing to weather long development timelines and significant upfront investment in hardware and infrastructure. That's where BDC Capital came in.

BDC Capital invested in Kepler as it moved from early development toward large-scale deployment—first in 2016 with a seed investment and again in 2021 when the Industrial Innovation Venture Fund supported Kepler’s Series B round. It has since done multiple follow-on investments. Kepler has raised over $300 million to date. 

BDC continues to invest as the company expands its satellite network and pursues increasingly complex projects. But the relationship has always extended beyond financing. Mitry meets regularly with his BDC advisor to work through business challenges, describing the meetings as genuinely open exchanges.

"It’s really valuable for us to have a trusted advisor at BDC that we can talk to openly," he says. "We meet regularly, discuss challenges and work through decisions in a way that's constructive and supportive."

Thanks in part to support from BDC, Kepler has achieved several global firsts: it was the first in the world to establish a laser link between a satellite travelling at 7.5 kilometres per second and a commercial aircraft, built the largest orbital computing cluster in space, and became the first Canadian company ever to serve as prime contractor for a European Space Agency program. 

Meanwhile, its growth has remained anchored in Canada despite early pressure from mentors and investors to move south.

A new layer of infrastructure

Most satellites operate like isolated nodes, transmitting data to Earth only when they pass over a ground station. This creates delays that can range from minutes to hours.

Kepler is working to change that. Its satellite constellation uses both radio frequencies and lasers to relay data between satellites in orbit. This allows information to move across a network in space before being transmitted to Earth, dramatically reducing latency.

“The problem we solved is how to point a laser at something the size of a baseball from thousands of kilometres away while both objects are moving at incredible speed,” Mitry says. “That’s what enables us to move data in real time.”

The company’s system effectively creates a fiber-optic network in space, allowing satellites to communicate continuously rather than intermittently.

Kepler is also pushing beyond connectivity. Its satellites host computing infrastructure in orbit, allowing data to be processed closer to where it is generated.

The result is a more flexible, responsive infrastructure that can support everything from commercial applications to defence and surveillance systems.

A strategic sector for Canada

As global competition intensifies, space-based communications are increasingly viewed as a strategic capability. Countries are investing heavily in satellite networks to support defence operations, secure access to critical data and monitor remote regions. For Canada, that includes vast and difficult-to-monitor areas, such as the Arctic.

“The only practical way to understand what's happening across a country as large as Canada—especially in the North—is from space," says Mitry.

Kepler’s technology enables real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The company’s orbital computing capability takes that further, allowing AI workloads to run in space so data can be analyzed before they reach the ground.

“In some situations, if you detect something and have to wait 30 minutes or more to get that data back, it may no longer be useful,” Mitry explains. For example, if you detect a foreign aircraft where it doesn’t belong, and it takes 30 minutes for that information to reach decision-makers, the aircraft will be long gone by the time they know it was there. 

Real-time access changes what’s possible, says Mitry. “So you can actually respond,” whether that’s a defence threat or a wildfire. These same capabilities can support disaster response, environmental monitoring and resource management.

But control over this infrastructure is becoming just as important as the technology itself.

“Access to data is increasingly tied to national policy and security,” Mitry says. “If you don’t have your own capabilities, you’re dependent on others.”

Competing on a global stage

Today, Kepler is one of Canada’s leading space technology companies, with approximately 200 employees and operations spanning North America and Europe.

It operates in a highly competitive global market. SpaceX has deployed a comparable optical system, but with a focus on the U.S. market—leaving international clients, including government and defence customers, looking for alternatives. In that context, Kepler’s Canadian base has become an advantage.

“There’s increasing demand for alternatives,” Mitry says. “Governments and organizations don’t want to rely on a single provider or a single country for critical infrastructure now.”

For Canada, the stakes are clear: If there were no domestic players in this space, the country would risk becoming dependent on foreign providers for critical capabilities. Companies like Kepler—supported by investors such as BDC—offer the ability to build, scale and retain strategic technologies at home while competing globally.

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