Payam Banazadeh

Payam Banazadeh is CEO & Founder of Capella Space, a Silicon Valley company operating the first and only constellation of American commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites that provides global all weather and all light persistent monitoring from space. Capella Space was founded by Payam in 2016 in a garage and after raising more than $250M of venture capital and launching 8 satellites Capella Space is now recognized as the leading provider of high resolution SAR imagery from space, and the only All-American commercial SAR provider .

Payam holds a business/management degree from Stanford University and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas. Prior to starting Capella Space Payam was a project manager and flight systems engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). During his short tenure at NASA JPL Payam received many awards including the NASA Mariner Award, NASA Discovery Award, and NASA Formulation Award. Payam was selected to be on the prestigious “Forbes 30 under 30” list in 2017 and Capella has been recognized by New York Times, Bloomberg, and Inc magazine as one of the top 25 disruptive companies in the world.