# Orbital 1.0: The journey to the start line > We've raised an investment round, and hired a new CEO! Source: https://orbitalhq.com/blog/2026-09-22-seed-round-jon-hammant Date: 2026-09-22 I’m very excited to share some big news: Orbital has closed its seed round, backed by [Big Ideas Group](https://bigideasgroup.co.uk/), and [Jon Hammant](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhammant/) is joining as CEO. I’ll be focusing on what I love most: building the product. It's taken me eight years to write that paragraph. ## Building the anti-glue company Orbital grew out of the consulting practice I was running. I set out to build the "anti-glue-code" company: a platform that could displace integration by working out how systems fit together, connecting them autonomously, and adapting when things changed. We built [Taxi](https://taxilang.org) to power it - a type system that adds meaning to existing API specs, describing how data relates without coupling systems together. With a compiler and query engine, Taxi enables Orbital to work out how to orchestrate systems in milliseconds, without someone wiring up every step. We bootstrapped for years, and got Orbital into production inside a bunch of serious enterprise businesses. Our customers have built incredible things on Orbital - anti-money laundering platforms, open banking solutions, and decoupled enterprise-wide microservices architectures. For a tiny company, those were hard-won relationships, and amazing validation of what we were doing. We were ready for the next step - we'd built the tech, and seen it run at scale, in heavily regulated businesses. Taking Orbital further meant building an engine for repeatable growth. I knew I needed someone alongside me who could help make that happen. --- ## Context and timing At the start of this year, I was having a beer with my friend and long-time Orbital supporter, Jon. He was at AWS at the time - leading AI for UK & Ireland - and was seeing the same problem repeatedly across his customers: enterprises trying to deploy agents, and hitting a wall. Jon pointed out that a lot of what Orbital already did was suddenly hyper-relevant: **enterprise AI needed a way to work deterministically across multiple systems while enforcing permissions.** People have started using the term [“Context Layer”](/blog/2026-09-09-taxononmy-vs-ontology#a-context-layer-surfaces-whats-relevant-now) to describe this. For years, we’d been calling it **Orbital**. Jon felt strongly that Orbital was always the right technology to fill the enterprise AI gap - it’s just that we’d arrived too early, but now might be our time. He urged me to go and get funding. I bought him another beer, and joked that if I pulled off the round, he should come and work with me one day. I was only half serious. I’ve always wanted to work with Jon, but he had a major role at AWS; the idea that he’d actually leave it to take a bet on a startup felt pretty unlikely. So I started fundraising. Another friend and long-time supporter introduced me to Sebastian at Big Ideas Group (BIG). A few months later, they agreed to back us. BIG brings more than just capital - they bring experience building and scaling enterprise companies, and a team stacked with great human beings. I’m thrilled to be partnering with them. Jon had since joined Kyndryl - a major global consultancy - where he was running AI. With the round closed, I bought him more beers, and started pitching him. He said yes. Jon starts next week. Jon brings exactly the experience I was looking for: turning great technology into repeatable growth. He’s built and grown AI businesses at some of the biggest companies in the world, and he brings serious technical chops too - including building trading infrastructure for Goldman Sachs and LSEG, and running Accenture’s global DevOps practice. I’m very excited to be working with - and learning from - my new colleague. --- ## The view from the start line We have a big vision of where this leads: Enterprise AI that can operate safely across every system a business runs, with data and capabilities discovered, connected, and delivered in real time - autonomously, globally, without anyone wiring it up. Integration stops being a thing. But that's a story for another day. The last eight years gave us the technology, the lessons, and customers doing remarkable things with Orbital. It's been really amazing seeing what they’ve built. Nothing changes for them, except that we'll be shipping faster. We now have the capital, the team, and the opportunity to deliver on the vision. To everyone who's worked on or supported Orbital and Taxi over the years, I’m deeply *deeply* grateful. We wouldn’t be here without you. So, eight years in, here we are. Finally at the start line, Orbital 1.0. I couldn’t be more excited! LFG! *P.S. If you're building agents that need to safely reach into enterprise systems, come and [talk to us](/contact). And if you'd rather help build that than buy it, we're [hiring](/careers).*