# AxionOrbital Space

> AxionOrbital Space is a San Francisco startup building foundation models that turn radar satellite data into analysis-ready optical imagery in real time. Its flagship model, ORION, translates Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) backscatter into photorealistic images so customers can see through clouds, smoke, and darkness - the roughly 70% of the time when conventional optical satellites go blind. A Y Combinator Winter 2026 company, it targets defense, commodities trading, and disaster response.

- **Founded:** 2025
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founders:** Dhenenjay Yadav (Co-founder & CEO), Atharva Peshkar (Co-founder & CTO)
- **Team size:** 4
- **Products:** ORION
- **Notable:** Built ORION, reported as new state of the art for SAR-to-optical translation - FID 30.24, ~19.23% better than prior SOTA C-DiffSET on the MSAW benchmark., Achieved a new-best SSIM of 0.60 for SAR-to-optical image quality., Real-time inference at ~0.06 seconds per image via deterministic one-step diffusion.

## Products & services

- **ORION** — A SAR-to-optical foundation model that converts raw Synthetic Aperture Radar backscatter into high-resolution, photorealistic optical satellite imagery in real time. Uses a proprietary deterministic one-step diffusion architecture, outputs physically anchored to the radar signal (no hallucinated features), 0.06s latency, and benchmark-leading quality (FID 30.24, SSIM 0.60 on MSAW).

## Achievements

- Built ORION, reported as new state of the art for SAR-to-optical translation - FID 30.24, ~19.23% better than prior SOTA C-DiffSET on the MSAW benchmark.
- Achieved a new-best SSIM of 0.60 for SAR-to-optical image quality.
- Real-time inference at ~0.06 seconds per image via deterministic one-step diffusion.
- Accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch.

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Public launch of ORION, a SAR-to-optical foundation model for 24/7 Earth observation, as part of YC W26.

## Links

- Website: https://axionorbital.space
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/axion-orbital
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/axionorbital

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Last updated: 2026-07-31