With twenty years of experience in space and finance, Alan Khalili will soon be faced with the urgent task of marketing Kleos' products. (Photo: Kleos Space)

With twenty years of experience in space and finance, Alan Khalili will soon be faced with the urgent task of marketing Kleos' products. (Photo: Kleos Space)

As Kleos Space prepared to launch four satellites in its Observer mission, the Kockelscheuer-based space company confirmed the handover from CEO Andy Bowyer to Alan Khalili.

Kleos Space has formalised the handover from Bowyer, one of its founders and CEO, to Khalili, who was recruited last July to the strategic position of CFO of the Luxembourg startup, which is active in the US, the UK and Australia.

A former auditor with EY in Chicago, Khalili had left another promising space project, SpaceLink, before the startup went out of business, abandoned by its parent company EOS and unable to find the $250m it would have needed to launch its long-awaited Earth-to-space relay constellation.

Khalili is also very familiar with Kleos’ core business, data as a service (DaaS) for military and economic intelligence, having founded space company Iridium, which became Aireon and which he left in July 2017.

A valuable American

The particular interest for Kleos in seeing this executive step up to the front line, while Bowyer remains on the board and will be responsible for strategy, is his nationality.

“Kleos’ executive change to a US citizen will help with the execution of the significant market opportunity for provision of intelligence products in the USA--the world’s largest defence intelligence market. Increased engagement with the US intelligence community should also support the acquisition of high-value government contracts in other market,” a statement said.

“Kleos is at an exciting juncture in its growth trajectory, with its Vigilance Mission satellites now delivering data to feed our signal processing technology. In addition, we have secured our first contract with a US Government Agency and have a solid pipeline, reflecting the high level of demand for our intelligence products,” Khalili commented.

Four satellites ready for launch

“Kleos has a world-class global team, and I look forward to leveraging our European technology development and satellite operations to address real-world challenges for defence entities, national security agencies, and commercial organisations globally," said the new CEO.

As a result of this appointment, Kleos has begun a search for a new CFO. Sara Fanous, who joined from SpaceLink and has also worked for EY, Aireon and Iridium, has been appointed to the VP finance leadership role.

Kleos announced on the morning of Tuesday 3 January that four new satellites, the Observer mission, would be launched by Space X at around 3.56pm Luxembourg time on the same day.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.

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