satellite-navigation
(4)oneNav, Inc.
oneNav is a Silicon Valley semiconductor startup building the world's first L5-direct GNSS receiver - a chip architecture that skips the aging GPS L1 band entirely and uses the modern L5 satellite signal to deliver positioning that is more accurate, lower-power, and far harder to jam or spoof. Founded in 2019 by Steve Poizner and Dr. Paul McBurney, the company sells IP cores and ASICs to smartphone, wearable, IoT and defense customers.
Brian Manning
Brian Manning is the co-founder and CEO of Xona Space Systems, a Burlingame, California startup building Pulsar, a commercial alternative to GPS broadcast from a planned 258-satellite constellation in low-Earth orbit. A former SpaceX engineer who worked on the Falcon 9 thrust structure, Manning reunited eight Stanford aerospace graduates over pizza and beer in 2019 to chase a question nobody had answered: why has no one built a private, encrypted, centimeter-accurate navigation network? In 2022 Xona launched Huginn, the first commercial satellite navigation mission in orbit, and in March 2026 closed an oversubscribed $170 million Series C to scale manufacturing and begin deploying production satellites.
Xona Space Systems
Xona Space Systems is a Burlingame, California company building Pulsar, a commercial low-Earth-orbit constellation that delivers positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) with centimeter-level accuracy, signals far stronger than legacy GPS, and built-in authentication to resist jamming and spoofing. Founded in 2019 by Stanford and SpaceX alumni, Xona aims to deploy roughly 258 satellites that work with existing devices through software updates, offering a resilient alternative and augmentation to government-run satellite navigation systems.
Upal Basu
Upal Basu is a General Partner and Managing Member at NGP Capital, a Nokia-backed venture capital firm in Palo Alto. A three-time wave rider of mobile transformation - first as an engineer, then as the founder and CEO of Mformation Technologies (which became the world's largest mobile device management company, managing 500M+ devices before being acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), and now as a lead investor in the 5G and connected enterprise era. With an engineering degree from Imperial College London, an MS from Stanford, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Basu brings a rare blend of operator grit and institutional rigor to backing founders in cybersecurity, AI, autonomous robotics, satellite navigation, and industrial technology.