In the latest tech news, the light-based internet project Taara is making headlines as it exits Alphabet’s “moonshot” incubator X and transitions into an independent company. Taara leverages laser technology to transmit data, positioning itself as a competitor to Elon Musk’s Starlink, particularly in connecting rural areas to the internet.
According to a Financial Times report, Alphabet will maintain a minority stake in Taara, which has also attracted funding from Series X Capital. Currently, the company employs around two dozen staff members and operates in 12 countries, engaging in projects that range from connecting the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo to enhancing the network at the 2024 Coachella festival.
Eric “Astro” Teller, who leads X’s moonshot projects, stated, “We’ve realized over time that for many of our creations, there’s significant benefit in operating outside of the Alphabet framework. This enables a quicker connection to market capital, attracting strategic investors, and generally scaling faster.”
Taara’s technology involves transmitting a narrow beam of light between terminals, which are approximately the size of traffic lights, achieving transmission speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second over distances of 20 kilometers (about 12.5 miles). These terminals can be mounted on towers and offer a faster and more economical installation solution than traditional fiber optics, especially in challenging locations such as islands or across rivers. Recently, the company announced a significant advancement: it has condensed its technology into a compact chip, which is expected to be available in a product by 2026.
While Taara’s tower-based optical technology operates differently from Starlink’s satellite system, it aims to compete in the rural connectivity market. Founder Mahesh Krishnaswamy mentioned, “We can deliver 10, if not 100 times more bandwidth to end users compared to a typical Starlink antenna, and do so at a fraction of the cost,” as noted in coverage by Wired.
Taara’s origins can be traced back to another X initiative, Loon, which had envisioned data distribution through lasers shot from a network of high-altitude balloons. However, this concept proved unviable, leading to Loon’s dissolution in 2021, just three years after it graduated from Alphabet’s moonshot program. The lasers from Loon were repurposed into Taara’s towers by Krishnaswamy, while also contributing to Aalyria, another spin-off focused on satellite and airborne mesh networks, which has its own similar project called Tightbeam.
