LaserFleet (Shenzhen Hangxing Optical Space Technology)

LaserFleet was founded in 2017 by Brooks Pan (Pan Yunbin), a serial aerospace entrepreneur previously CEO of Shareco and inventor of the world's first in-flight Wi-Fi integrated device. The company set out to launch a constellation of hundreds of LEO satellites using Free Space Optical (FSO) laser communication instead of radio frequency links, targeting reliable high-speed data rates to aircraft and other platforms at lower cost than best-in-class RF-band competitors.

LaserFleet drew on engineering support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, notably the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, with which it signed a strategic cooperation agreement in February 2018. Its flagship achievement was developing what may have been the world's lightest laser communication payload at the time: a 0.4kg-class ground-to-satellite laser communication payload, which flew on a CZ-4B rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in November 2019 for the Tianyi Research Institute, representing Chinese commercial space industry's first attempt at establishing a satellite-to-ground laser link.

LaserFleet's payloads also flew on Tianyi's Xiaoxiang-series 6U CubeSats as laser-communication technology-verification satellites. Investors included CAS Holdings Capital, Tendence Capital, and GeekHouse Capital. The company's original domain (lf.link) is no longer active, and available evidence suggests the venture has gone dormant since around 2019-2020.