Orbital Industries is Scaling its AI Engine for the Physical Economy and Building Next-Generation Data Centre Hardware

Orbital Industries, an AI-first industrial company using frontier AI to design, manufacture, and ship the physical products the world needs, led by Jonathan Godwin, James Gin-Pollock, Daniel Miodovnik, and the team, has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Plural. Existing and previous investors, NVentures (NVIDIA), Radical Ventures, Compound, and Fly Ventures also participated.

The funding will support scaling Orbital’s data centre products, expanding its AI and engineering teams, and accelerating development of its platform for broader industrial applications beyond data centres.

Orbital is building an “AI industrial” platform that unifies materials discovery, engineering, and manufacturing into a single AI-driven system aimed at accelerating physical infrastructure development.

The company is entering the market through Orbital IT, focused on data centre infrastructure, an industry currently constrained by power, cooling, and GPU density challenges as AI compute demand grows rapidly.

A key focus is dielectric cooling and refrigeration systems designed for next-generation high-density GPUs, developed using an AI engine called Orb that simulates large-scale quantum mechanical systems for materials and fluid design. This approach has enabled accelerated development timelines and supports deployment in hyperscale environments, including partnerships with major operators such as AWS.

Orbital is developing modular, AI-designed data centre systems aimed at addressing the infrastructure bottlenecks created by extreme GPU density and rising AI compute demand.

The system is manufactured off-site and delivered as ready-to-deploy units, reducing deployment timelines from up to three years to as little as six months, enabling faster scaling of high-density compute capacity.

With a team of around 50 across London and San Francisco, Orbital is positioning its platform for broader industrial expansion beyond data centres, including applications in semiconductors, critical minerals, aerospace, and energy.

Jonathan Godwin said that Orbital is using frontier AI to compress traditionally decade-long physical R&D cycles into months by enabling small teams with PhD-level capability across disciplines. He noted that while the company is initially focused on solving critical bottlenecks in data centre infrastructure, the same AI-driven approach could extend to a much broader set of industrial applications.

Ian Hogarth said that AI progress is increasingly constrained by physical-world limitations such as energy, heat, and infrastructure, and that Orbital is addressing these constraints through AI-driven industrial breakthroughs, including cooling technologies for next-generation GPUs. He added that faster discovery and deployment of such physical technologies will define the next phase of AI, noting strong market demand for Orbital’s approach.