California Startup Orbital Raises $5M to Build AI Data Centers in Space
June 19, 2026
California Startup Orbital Raises $5M to Build AI Data Centers in Space
A Los Angeles-based startup called Orbital has emerged from stealth with a $5 million pre-seed funding round, betting that the future of artificial intelligence computing lies not on Earth, but in orbit. The company plans to launch a pathfinder mission in 2027 featuring an Nvidia Blackwell chip, and ultimately envisions a constellation of up to 100,000 satellites delivering more than 10 gigawatts of computing power.
The pre-seed round was led by a16z’s accelerator program Speedrun, with participation from a broad group of investors including Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder Ventures, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent Venture Partners, Rubik Ventures, Zero Knowledge Ventures, LYVC, Feld Ventures, New Legacy, FNDR, UpHonest Capital, and Asterisk. The funding marks one of the earliest bets by major venture capital on the concept of orbital data centers, a niche that has gained sudden traction since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos publicly advocated for the idea in October 2025.
Orbital’s founder and CEO Euwyn Poon, who previously sold his e-scooter company Spin to Ford, argues that terrestrial data centers are fundamentally constrained by geography. “The sun is the most abundant and accessible source of energy in the universe, yet we’ve barely begun to tap into it,” Poon said in a statement. “Orbital is turning that energy directly into intelligence. We’re building AI data centers in orbit, where solar power is continuous, and heat dissipates into the void of space. Advances in launch infrastructure are making this an imminent reality, not science fiction.”
The company’s first demonstrator mission, scheduled for 2027, will carry an Nvidia Blackwell GPU to test radiation tolerance, thermal performance, and data downlink capabilities in the harsh environment of low-Earth orbit. A full-scale satellite, dubbed Orbital-1, is planned for 2028. Later generations will be capable of integrating Nvidia’s upcoming Space-1 Vera Rubin module, according to the company.
Orbital’s technical ambitions face significant engineering challenges. While sun-synchronous orbits offer continuous solar power, they also expose satellites to extreme temperatures reaching 120°C (248°F) and intense solar radiation. Unlike Earth, space offers no convection or diffusion for heat dissipation, leaving radiation as the only effective cooling method. The International Space Station has long relied on an expensive ammonia-based cooling system and large external radiators to manage heat. Orbital claims its satellites, each about the size of a refrigerator with a solar array the size of a tennis court, will be able to micronize the total computing power of the ISS — estimated at 100 kilowatts — aboard a single spacecraft. The company has not yet disclosed the mass of its satellites or the dimensions of their radiators.
The startup’s vision of a 100,000-satellite fleet would rival the scale of the largest proposed constellations. By comparison, Cowboy Space Corporation, previously known as Aetherflux, filed for a 20,000-satellite constellation with the FCC in May, backed by a $275 million Series B round. Orbital plans to build its satellites at Factory-1, a facility in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, where Poon hopes to leverage automation to overcome the high labor costs of California.
Poon’s team includes veterans from SpaceX, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Vast, Northrop Grumman, and Millennium Space Systems, according to the company. The startup is currently hiring engineers specializing in thermal and power systems, mechanical and structural design, and electrical manufacturing. Orbital says its satellites will be interconnected using optical intersatellite links, enabling them to handle large-scale AI inference workloads in orbit.
The broader interest in orbital data centers was ignited last October when Jeff Bezos, speaking at Italian Tech Week in Turin, argued that data centers would be “better built in space, because we have solar power there, 24/7. There are no clouds and no rain, no weather.” Bezos did not claim that space made cooling easier, a point underscored by the technical hurdles Orbital now aims to solve.
Source: datacenterdynamics
