Orbital, a Los Angeles startup, has closed a pre-seed round of $5 million led by a16z’s startup accelerator program Speedrun.
Speedrun was joined in the pre-seed round by 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 company aims to launch its pathfinder demonstrator mission in 2027, which will feature an Nvidia Blackwell chip to test GPU operation, radiation tolerance, thermal performance, and data downlink. Its first full satellite, Orbital-1, is to follow in 2028, eventually paving the way for an up to 100,000-satellite constellation.
"The sun is the most abundant and accessible source of energy in the universe, yet we've barely begun to tap into it,” said Euwyn Poon, founder and CEO, Orbital, 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. This infrastructure will power intelligence for the planet."
Orbit CEO Poon, who sold his e-scooter company, Spin, to Ford a year after it was founded in 2017, describes the data center market as being constrained by the “limits of natural geography,” destined to be replaced by orbital alternatives.
Poon describes a team at Orbital with past experience at SpaceX, Amazon Leo, Vast, Northrop Grumman, and Millennium Space Systems. Orbital’s website advertises roles at the startup for engineers in the field of thermal and power, mechanical and structural, and electrical and manufacturing.
Sun-synchronous orbits possess perpetual access to solar power, but also unending exposure to the heat and radioactivity of the sun, capable of roasting satellites in conventional orbits to temperatures of 120°C (248°F). Here, heat does not dissipate into the void of space through convection or diffusion, leaving radiation as the only effective option. The International Space Station (ISS) has long proven a method of transferring heat from its various systems through an expensive ammonia cooling system to a large external radiator on its dark side.
Silicon Valley’s sudden interest in orbital data centers was sparked last October when Jeff Bezos discussed them at Italian Tech Week in Turin, explaining that data centers were “better built in space, because we have solar power there, 24/7. There are no clouds and no rain, no weather." He did not claim, however, that the cold of space made cooling easier.
Orbital intends to micronize the total computing power of the ISS, which it estimates at 100kW, aboard a single satellite of its proposed 100,000-strong fleet, capable of handling large AI inference workloads, interconnected with optical intersatellite links (ISLs). The company hasn’t yet shared details around the mass of its satellites or the dimensions of the radiators they will use.
The 48 radiator panels of the ISS’ External Active Thermal Control System, each about 3.33 by 2.64 meters, are spread across six array assemblies, connected by 22 parallel flow tubes. NASA specifies that this system was designed to provide 35kW of heat rejection per loop, for a total capability of 70kW of heat. Many visual renders illustrating ODC satellites do not appear to possess radiators of any kind, as is the case with conventional satellites.
Orbital describes its satellites as about the size of a fridge, but with a solar array the size of a tennis court. The company says its later generations of satellite will be able to integrate Nvidia’s Space-1 Vera Rubin module.
Orbital’s vision for 100,000 orbital data center (ODC) satellites would be capable of delivering more than 10GW of computing power. The fleet is to be constructed at Factory-1, a satellite assembly and testing facility in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, where Poon hopes to build low-cost satellites as quickly as possible in a city and state with the highest labor costs in America, a challenge Orbital hopes to solve with automation.
Cowboy Space Corporation, previously known as Aetherflux, only filed for a 20,000-satellite constellation with the FCC in May, a goal being fuelled by a $275m Series B announced the same month.