Q&A: After expanding to Montreal, this satellite company is looking to commercialize GPS systems

Based out of the RCA Building in Montreal, where Canadian satellite Alouette 1 was built, Tyler Reid is looking to construct another revolutionary space-based technology. Reid is the chief technology officer of Xona, a U.S. satellite company looking to commercialize the GPS systems that almost everyone uses to move around. After recently expanding into Canada, Xona has teamed up with the federal government in its quest to launch a new constellation that would replace the decades-old technology used for current GPS services. Can we start with the history behind Xona? At Xona, we’re building the first commercial GPS system. Today, when you pull out your phone, you get the blue dot that tells you where you are in the world. You’re connecting to satellites in space, but those satellites are U.S. Air Force satellites in the case of GPS. This is Cold War technology and something that would have come online in the 1980s or 1990s. It’s something that has brought navigation to the world and brought navigation to billions of users, making it accessible for everyone. It’s a great technology in terms of how it’s become widespread, but it’s also a decades-old technology, and a lot of industries are looking for more than what GPS brings to the table. Particularly in the commercial realm, they’re looking for more capability. That’s where Xona comes in as a commercial entrant building its own constellation of new satellites to bring new services to those folks that enable new industries. Who exactly is the clientele? Are you targeting governments? Or, just private companies? The answer is anyone who uses GPS today, which includes governments, but it also includes commercial markets as well. The commercial market is the largest consumer of GPS, with more than 99 per cent of GPS consumers being commercial. There’s a huge commercial opportunity because of the proliferation of smartphones, in particular. So, it’s a subscription model in the same way you subscribe to other services that give you access to satellite signals. The difference between GPS and our system is that GPS has two services on it. There’s an open public service that anyone can use provided by the government, while the other is an encrypted military service only be used for military purposes. In our case, we are a service encrypted in the same way a satellite communication link would be encrypted if you weren’t a subscriber to it, so it’s encrypted to be able to monetize the service. But, once you subscribe, you can use the service as you would any number of services, whether it be a smartphone or the internet. So, it’s the same technology as GPS, but under a specific brand? GPS turns out to be the specific name of the U.S. government system, and the generic term used to include other systems in the world are global navigation satellite systems. GPS set the name for the thing that was adopted first, but there are other systems in other countries, like the Galileo system in Europe, BeiDou in China, or GLONASS in Russia. So, we are in that category of global navigation satellite systems. In many ways, we are a compatibility technology as we’ve designed our signals and service to work inside the same receivers that are using GPS today. So, this will require launching a new constellation. Has Xona already started sending up satellites? We have started. So, we’re a venture-backed company, and we’ve raised up to our Series C funding now, which was a $170 million round. That brings our total capital raised to $285 million US, which allowed us to deploy our first production satellite. We launched our first technology demonstrator satellite in 2022, which was a big step for the industry. That was the first commercial GPS satellite, just to use that term again, and that really showed the market that it’s not just government superpowers that build satellites like this. The off-the-shelf technology allows you to do this in a different way than what was done in the past, but still get really high performance. We took those lessons learned and then launched our first production satellite last summer, while we’re on schedule to launch another six satellites toward the end of this year. Where are you launching from? A recent bill proposed by the federal government could allow for satellites to be launched from Canada, but are you currently launching from the U.S.? Right now, we’ve launched with SpaceX on rideshare missions because they have the most rides. It’s the cheapest and more reliable option, and they launch more than 100 rockets a year. You can’t be too picky on which orbit you get into with that, but for these first satellites, that doesn’t matter as much to us. So, our first launch was out of Florida, while the most recent one was out of Vandenberg in California because that was a polar orbiting satellite and we could do more over the Arctic. Would Xona have interest in launching from Canada down the road? Absolutely. What we’ve noticed is, as the number of launches is going up, the number of launch slots available to folks like us is not necessarily going up because demand coming from these large constellations being deployed is eating up a lot of those launches. With SpaceX, a lot of those launches are consumed by their own Starlink system, so it doesn’t give a ton of room for new entrants to come in. So, the more folks launching and the more opportunities, the better. I think the launch ports identified in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are interesting places from our perspective. Our Canadian office is based in Montreal, so we have a relationship with some of the folks building those launch companies, and we think the more the merrier. Can you explain to me how an individual Canadian’s experience might change, going from traditional GPS to commercial GPS? Our goal is to make it as seamless as possible for end users because most folks just care that their position works. So, if you’re on your smartphone, there’s a bunch of services that you are already paying for to make GPS work as snappy as it does. The reason that it works in two seconds to get your position, instead of two minutes, is because there’s data coming over the network that makes it work more quickly. The goal for us is to have it work on your phone as well as it works today, and to bring new features. I saw a recent announcement Xona made in partnership with the federal government. How has your experience been working with Ottawa? Have they been welcoming to your mission? Since the beginning, the Canadian Space Agency has been a really big advocate for us. Traditionally, there’s been a lot of focus on earth observation or telecommunication with space launch, but navigation is not something we’ve built an industrial base for, but rather something for which we’ve relied on other systems. So, it’s been great to see that strong interest in building more capability in Canada and support what we’re doing. Can you paint me a picture — what is the best case for Xona by 2050? If everything goes as planned, people will say, ‘oh yeah, you used to use GPS. That’s what that was called,’ but, instead, people think of Xona. That’s the golden scenario that happens in 20 years from now. What does that look like from a technical perspective? Well, we’ve deployed our full constellation of approximately 300 satellites, we have widespread adoption across multiple industries, and we’re bringing new capabilities online. Take, for example, the automotive sector and autonomous vehicles. I used to work at Ford and my job was to figure out the location technologies that make these vehicles a reality because GPS is not really at the mark where it needs to be. GPS is a great technology for humans because it gets you pretty close to where you need to be, but when you’re talking about something that’s fully autonomous, it needs to know where to less than the width of the paint on the road to do that reliably. So, this technology is supporting all these new technologies coming forward. Is there anything else you’d like to emphasize? Just to say that we’re excited to be continuing expansion in Montreal, which has been great for us. There’s actually a fun historical factor, as we’re in the building where Alouette 1, Canada’s first satellite, was built. dlegree@thewirereport.ca Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q&A: After expanding to Montreal, this satellite company is looking to commercialize GPS systems

Telecom |
By Davis Legree
|June 5, 2026

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us

Q&A: After expanding to Montreal, this satellite company is looking to commercialize GPS systems

Telecom | By Davis Legree |June 5, 2026

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Feds, B.C. spend $236 million to expand broadband access on West Coast

Q&A: Private 5G networks will soon see a meteoric rise in Canada, says industry leader

Universal Broadband Fund will not be renewed as Canada approaches connectivity goal: industry source

Related Stories

ISED looks to limit space debris in update to satellite spectrum licences

ISED grants SpaceX temporary E-band access ahead of World Radio Conference

Canadian satellite companies look forward to launching from home soil

New government bill would enable satellite launches from Canada

Reuse & Permissions

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us

Telecom |
By Davis Legree
|June 5, 2026