🛰️ Supplying The Demand

May 15th, 2026

May 15, 2026

Good morning, and happy Friday! Matt here.

The message in Miami was clear: building a sustainable distributed network takes time, and aligning with deployers is a key part of the long-term vision of scaling that network. 

Demand sits at the heart of the entire equation. 

Let’s take a closer look 🔍

🛰️ On the Radar

Don’t just take our word for it. The founders building at the forefront of distributed systems are proving the thesis in real time: 

📡 Decen Space aims to provide every satellite with a near-continuous ground link, building from first principles rather than on token hype. We have some exclusive alpha for you on that coming up soon. 👀

🛸 FliteGrid has caught four tailwinds at once, including a federal mandate and Motorola Solutions money. You won’t wanna miss CEO Grant Jordan on DePIN Connected next Tuesday at noon ET.

📶 Helium is taking Mexico by storm, partnering with roaming subscribers on Helium in Mexico.

⚙️ Io.net saw its customer, Leonardo.Ai, scale to 19M users on the GPU network, then get acquired by Canva.

⛏️ Akash saw Q1 compute spend hit an all-time high of $5M, driven by AkashML's AI inference layer processing 1.7B daily tokens via OpenRouter.

Time to break it down. 🕺

📡 The Relay

What can top physical devices that pay you for operating the network? Physical meetups where we dive deep on that exact topic.

We met Tristan, founder of Decen Space, at Consensus last week. He flew all the way from Germany to break bread with fellow founders in the distributed infrastructure space. 

The conversation was eye-opening. Despite roughly 4,500 satellites being launched last year, 3,000 of them were Starlink. That’s not intrinsically a bad thing, but Starlink already has a robust network of ground-station receivers. Most other satellites have only one ground station, so they get about 10 minutes of contact per 90-minute orbit. 

That’s not very efficient for something that went all the way to space. The satellite communications industry is projected to be worth $50-100 billion of the already trillion-dollar space industry by 2030. 

Decen Space is positioning itself to capture a significant slice of that growth. 

The pitch is simple. Distributed ground stations on commercial frequencies that cost between $1000 and $2000. Mount them on roofs, similar to GEODNET and Wingbits, and aim to deploy 20,000 globally.

So far, so good. They’re deploying 20 this year, and the satellite operators using them report 3-5X enhancements in contact times per orbit. That’s a big step towards real-time satellite communication. 

The conversation was out of this world, but Decen Space's approach was firmly grounded in reality. Recall that demand is at the heart of distribution, and that Decen Space is rolling out its network methodically and thoughtfully.

The hardware is targeting a 2027 full-scale rollout, so if you’re keen to keep your eyes to the sky, mark your calendars for this early alpha from The Relay. 

Follow @DecenSpace and@spacetristan on X.

👋 Signing Off

Distributed infrastructure is learning essential lessons as it grows. The first cohort built their network and hoped demand would materialize organically. 

Some did, but far from the volume of demand needed to become the next Uber. 

The networks that are winning today have inverted the mode. 

They’re finding customers and then scaling supply to meet existing demand before working strategically to grow those channels. 

As you can see, the only thing hotter than the blistering Miami UV index was the alpha arising from the conversations. 

Feel like this issue boosted your signal? Send it to a friend, and don’t forget to tune into The Relay live on X next Friday while following Matt and Will for more insights throughout the week.

Catch you next Friday! 👋