Starcloud Raises $170 Million Series A to Build Data Centers in Space

Starcloud, building data centers in space, led by Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden, and Adi Oltean, has raised $170 million in Series A  led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures, valuing the company at $1.1 billion. 

Starcloud has raised $200 million to date and launched its first satellite equipped with an Nvidia H100 GPU in November 2025. Later this year, Starcloud 2 will deploy a more powerful satellite featuring multiple GPUs, including an Nvidia Blackwell chip, an AWS server blade, and a bitcoin mining computer.

The company is also developing Starcloud 3, a 200-kilowatt, three-ton data center spacecraft designed to launch from SpaceX’s Starship. It will use the “PEZ dispenser” deployment system originally built for Starlink satellites.

CEO and founder Philip Johnston expects Starcloud 3 to become the first orbital data center cost-competitive with terrestrial facilities, targeting power costs around $0.05 per kWh, assuming commercial launch prices reach approximately $500 per kilogram.

The challenge is that Starship has yet to begin commercial flights. Johnston anticipates access opening in 2028–2029, reflecting a broader reality: space-based data centers will remain cost-prohibitive until a new generation of rockets achieves high-frequency launches, likely not until the 2030s.

Johnston notes, “If Starship is delayed, smaller satellites will continue launching on Falcon 9. Energy costs won’t be competitive until Starship achieves frequent flights.”

Johnston explains two business models: first, selling processing power to other spacecraft. Starcloud’s initial satellite, for example, processes data from Capella Space’s radar satellites. Second, as launch costs decline, larger distributed orbital data centers could eventually supplement or offload work from terrestrial facilities.

The contrast highlights how nascent the space computing industry remains. When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the Vera Rubin Space-1 chip modules at the company’s GPU Technology Conference, none had yet been produced or shared with development partners.

By comparison, only dozens of advanced GPUs currently operate in orbit, while Nvidia sold an estimated 4 million to terrestrial hyperscalers in 2025.

By comparison, SpaceX’s Starlink, the largest satellite network with 10,000 spacecraft, generates roughly 200 megawatts of power, while U.S. data centers under construction exceed 25 gigawatts, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

Johnston asserts that Starcloud is ahead of the competition, having deployed the first terrestrial GPU in orbit to train an AI model and run a version of Gemini. Beyond performance, the company has gained critical insights into operating high-powered chips in space.

“An H100 is probably not ideal for space, but we wanted to demonstrate that state-of-the-art terrestrial chips can operate in orbit,” Johnston told TechCrunch. Lessons learned from previous failures, such as an Nvidia A6000 that didn’t survive launch, will inform future satellite designs.

Starcloud faces numerous technical challenges, including efficient power generation and cooling high-performance chips. Starcloud-2 will feature the largest deployable radiator ever flown on a private satellite, with at least two more versions expected to reach orbit, according to Johnston.

Synchronization poses another major challenge: large-scale training workloads require hundreds or thousands of GPUs working in tandem. In space, this will demand either massive spacecraft or powerful, reliable laser links between satellites flying in formation. Most companies expect these workloads to follow simpler inference tasks.

In addition to Starcloud, Aetherflux, Google’s Project Suncatcher, and Aethero, which launched Nvidia’s first space-based Jetson GPU in 2025, are developing space data center solutions.

The biggest competitor remains SpaceX, which has requested U.S. government approval to deploy a million satellites for distributed space computing. While competing with SpaceX is formidable, Johnston believes there is room for coexistence.