Starcloud Raises $170M Series A to Advance Orbital Data Centers

Space computing startup Starcloud has raised $170 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures, valuing the company at $1.1 billion. The raise comes just 17 months after its Y Combinator demo day, marking one of the fastest paths to unicorn status in the emerging space infrastructure sector.

The company is developing orbital data centers designed to process data in space, a concept gaining attention as terrestrial data center expansion faces constraints related to energy, land use, and regulation.

Starcloud has raised a total of $200 million to date and has already launched its first satellite equipped with an Nvidia H100 GPU in late 2025. That system has been used for in-orbit AI model training and data processing, including work tied to satellites operated by Capella Space.

Starcloud plans to expand its capabilities with upcoming spacecraft, including Starcloud 2, which will carry multiple GPUs such as Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell chips and integrated cloud hardware.

The company is also designing a larger platform, Starcloud 3, intended to function as a full-scale orbital data center. This system is being built to launch aboard SpaceX’s Starship, which is expected to enable lower launch costs and support larger payloads once operational at scale.

CEO Philip Johnston said the long-term goal is to achieve cost competitiveness with terrestrial data centers, contingent on reduced launch costs and increased flight cadence. In the near term, Starcloud is focused on providing compute services directly to satellites in orbit, while future iterations could support distributed workloads shared with Earth-based systems.

Starcloud's model depends on several technical and economic challenges, including power generation, thermal management, and coordinating workloads across multiple spacecraft.

Starcloud’s approach positions it as an early entrant in what could become a capital-intensive but strategically significant segment of the space economy.

Image Credits: Starcloud