US company Xona just announced it was funded (8M$) to launch its demontrator satellite. The company aims to launch a constellation of up to 300 LEO satellites. Xona is the first satellite operator to plan to offer PNT services (Position-Navigation-Timing) that will complement existing GNSS such as GPS and Galileo. Xona says it will improve the quality of service of GNSS with better acuracy, better resilience and resistance to multipath thanks to a large number of satellites very close to earth.
While the idea has been around for a while, Xona is the first private company planning to develop a business in that field. What will be interesting is the business model that is envisioned as navigation signal is free to use today (we all have that in our cars and smartphones). The company probably will target “high-end” markets that need better quality of service and resilience to be able to monetize on their signal.
Press release here: https://www.xonaspace.com/pr20210921