The Space Startups to Watch Across the Middle East

Until very recently, the story of Arab ambition in space has been one of purchase orders. Satellites have been ordered from the French, Russian, Americans, and more recently from China, launched by rockets that weren't built locally and run from control rooms with imported talent. This model is changing, and the companies breaking it open are worth watching.

By 2032, the Middle East space industry will be worth around $75 billion and in the third quarter of 2025 alone, the wider industry has invested $5 billion into 115 companies. Governments have pushed this forward. Saudi Arabia has invested $2.1 billion into space under the umbrella of Vision 2030, the UAE has launched probes to Mars and astronauts to the International Space Station, and Oman is planning to develop a space port in the south of the country. Beyond the big programs of governments, however, a thinner and more fascinating layer is being laid down by private companies, even some that have been around for only a few years.

Much of what has been classified as the private space industry in the Middle East is actually owned either by a sovereign wealth fund or state holding company, leaving a legitimate question as to how much entrepreneurial risk has been taken in the region. The companies mentioned below are the exceptions to that rule – small companies designing their own systems, testing them and sending satellites into orbit. These are flanked by large, state-sponsored companies that are defining the ecosystem. Both are important, and the interrelationship is perhaps the key narrative in this whole sector at the moment.

Leap 71, Dubai

Leap 71 was created by the aerospace engineer Josefine Lissner and serial entrepreneur Lin Kayser who together created the computational algorithm named Noyron which can create the designs of rocket engines by itself and then send those designs to 3D printers. Just in the summer of 2024, when the company was only 15 months old, Leap 71 tested its first completely artificial-intelligence-designed liquid-fuel rocket engine, which functioned at temperatures above 3,500 degrees.

By 2026, the young company collaborated with HBD, the additive-manufacturing firm in Shanghai, to create an aerospike engine creating twenty tonnes of thrust per second and which happens to be one of the most complex engines of such kind to be created using 3D-printing technology. To them, everyone who wants to narrow the gap with the Americans, Russians and Chinese will require a fundamentally new approach, which means using computing technologies instead of big design teams.

SARsatX, Jeddah

Established in 2019 by Ahmed Alzubairi and Muhannad Almutiry, as a spinoff from the TAQADAM program of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, SARsatX is a Jeddah-based enterprise manufacturing small satellites equipped with synthetic aperture radar, allowing for visibility regardless of clouds and darkness, something that conventional optical satellites cannot provide. It aims to create a constellation of 18 satellites, providing imaging within hours for any purpose from crop monitoring to border control to detecting oil spills.

In May 2025, the company successfully closed a $2.6 million seed funding round headed by TONOMUS, the cognitive technology branch of the mega-project NEOM, which included the venture capital arm of Aramco, Wa'ed Ventures among the investors.

Madari Space, Abu Dhabi

Some of the region's boldest bets concern what happens once you are already in orbit. One of those companies is Madari Space, which operates from Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. It is based on the idea that, starting from the next decade, the amount of data provided by earth observation satellites and other sources will surpass 23,500 petabytes by 2035. Almost all of it will be in its raw form and will be brought down to earth to be processed there in extremely energy-consuming data centres, as warned by the CEO of the company, Sharif Al Romaithi.

The plan of Madari Space is to store and process the data, created by satellites in low earth orbits, using satellites that carry GPU clusters and have the vacuum of outer space to cool them. The advantage is that the owners of that data will be able to process it and use it in real time, and not after it is delivered to some earth-based data center. In the third quarter of 2026, a proof-of-concept mission will be launched together with the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, UNOOSA, the European satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space, and South Korean company Innospace, amongst others.

Orbitworks, Abu Dhabi

A partnership between Marlan Space, owned by the Abu Dhabi-based Royal Group, and the American Loft Orbital has made it its mission to establish Orbitworks as the first company capable of producing satellites in bulk. Their assembly plant looks to generate 50 spacecraft per year, each carrying 500 kilograms of payload. According to Orbitworks, it is the first private space infrastructure company of the Middle East, while its parent company, Marlan Space, reveals even greater plans, such as rocket production and finding a regional launch location.

Neo Space Group, Riyadh

No company more accurately demonstrates the concept of sovereign capital more than Neo Space Group, founded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund in 2024 to build up a space industry from virtually nothing. This isn’t a fledgling venture in any way. Rather, it’s a business tool that represents national strategy. To date, NSG’s major development has been the acquisition of the Earth observation data platform called UP42 from Airbus and the launch of the Kingdom’s first satellite imagery and geospatial analytics marketplace in August 2025. The fascination with space belongs to rocket ships and astronauts, whereas the real money, more and more often, lies in data.

Oman Lens, Muscat

Oman Lens, a startup firm based in the Sultanate, is set to launch a satellite equipped with AI and capable of delivering 50 centimetre-resolution images with onboard processors that can conduct several hundred trillion operations in seconds. The initiative also includes partners from the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, such as Star Vision Space, the Bahrain Space Agency and Sultan Qaboos University. Oman is building a spaceport at Duqm and is participating in an accelerator program as well.

Space42, Abu Dhabi

Space42 was created in 2024 following a merger between the satellite operator, Yahsat, and the artificial intelligence and geospatial company, Bayanat, and is now the established player in the UAE space sector just as any other incumbent would be in its industry. In 2025, it was able to raise a total of $695.5 million to build two new satellites called Al Yah 4 and Al Yah 5 backed by a contract worth $5.1 billion to deliver secure communication services to the UAE government until 2043.

Falak for Space Science and Research, Saudi Arabia

Falak for Space Science and Research is a Saudi non-profit organisation that plans to launch the first space biomedical experiment from the Kingdom on board the SpaceX launch vehicle. The experiment will study the impact of microgravity on the human eye microbiome and the behaviour of bacteria, their antibiotic resistance, and biofilm formation.