Luxembourg space scale-up Kleos began the new year with a new CEO after Alan Khalili succeeded Andy Bowyer in the role.
A press statement from the defence and intelligence technology firm, said that the transition took effect on 1 January 2023. Bowyer, a British national who launched the firm in Luxembourg in 2017, takes up the role of Chief Strategy Officer and remains a board member.
Khalili is a US citizen with more than two decades of senior management experience across Data-as- a-Service, aerospace, satellite, wireless voice, and Internet of Things (IoT) industries. Prior to the appointment, he served as Chief Financial Officer at Kleos, from July 2022. Previously, he worked for Aireon LLC, a global aircraft tracking company, which uses a hosted payload on a third-party satellite to collect data.
Both Bowyer and Khalili list US locations for their place of work in their LinkedIn profiles, suggesting a geographical shift for the scale-up which was established in Luxembourg following the launch of the 2016 Space Resources initiative.
Kleos said the appointment was designed to help the firm seize on “the significant market opportunity for provision of intelligence products in the USA – the world’s largest defence intelligence market.”
Khalili added that the firm had secured its first contract with a US government agency, adding that he looked “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.”
Kleos has appointed Sara Fanous to the VP Finance leadership role while it is in the process of recruiting a CFO to succeed Khalili.
