Starcloud Raises $250M More for Orbital Data Centers as Nvidia Backs Space Compute

Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston is deeply concerned about launch capacity: 'We can see what's coming — we're going to need to book an enormous amount of launch.' Starcloud has already requested permission from the FCC to operate 88,000 spacecraft. 'As soon as we can, we want to get under contract with things like Starship,' Johnston said. 'One of the biggest costs is now on securing your launch capacity... launch is pretty constrained right now because [SpaceX's] Falcon 9 program is scheduled to end in 2028.' Launch costs were already one of the biggest challenges for orbital data center startups — to the point that one startup has decided to build its own rockets. SpaceX is now planning to phase out its workhorse vehicle and bring the much larger but still unproven Starship online, making planning more difficult for satellite operators. That's especially true while competing rockets like Blue Origin's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan are not flying regularly, and new vehicles like Rocket Lab's Neutron are not yet on the pad.

In the near term, Starcloud is focused on launching two of its new-generation 8 kW compute satellites (dubbed Starcloud-2) on rideshare flights in 2027. These will perform orbital inference tasks for customers including U.S. government agencies. Starcloud is also considering buying a dedicated Falcon 9 launch to launch more spacecraft and signing contracts with other providers to support future missions. But the company's ultimate vision revolves around SpaceX's Starship — only if Starship dramatically cuts launch costs can an orbital inference layer compete with terrestrial data centers. Johnston says he remains confident in SpaceX's ability to demonstrate that the world's most powerful rocket can be reused quickly and often. This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company will delay an attempt to catch a returning Starship rocket for a few months, and will attempt to re-fly the vehicle for the first time at the end of the year or early 2027. 'Obviously if we can't book any SpaceX launch capacity in 2029, that will be challenging for us,' Johnston said.

Johnston points to Nvidia's investment as a key signal of Starcloud's advantages in the nascent space compute sector. Starcloud is the only company (that we know of) currently operating an Nvidia H100 terrestrial data center GPU in orbit, and the first to train a model using it; most other space GPUs are designed for edge processing. As Nvidia develops its first purpose-built GPU for space — the Vera Rubin Space-1 chip — Starcloud is sharing those learnings with the chipmaker. 'The reason they've chosen to do this investment now is because of all of this data that we got from Starcloud One,' Johnston told TechCrunch. 'They, more than any other VC, did way more technical duty on this than anybody else.' The space-ready chip hasn't even been built yet, but Starcloud hopes to fly it into orbit sometime in late 2028. Johnston says his engineers are tracking a few key design choices: the relationship between the chip's running temperature and the size of the radiators that dispel the heat, the placement of radiation shielding, and the ruggedizing required for the chips to survive the violence of a rocket launch.

From an industry perspective, Starcloud's funding round sends multiple signals. First, space AI computing is moving from proof-of-concept to scale — in-orbit inference can address scenarios terrestrial data centers cannot cover, such as low-latency edge computing for global satellite communications, geographically restricted data processing, and defense and intelligence applications. Second, Nvidia's strategic investment shows the chip giant is taking the space market seriously: rather than waiting for others to define the standards of space computing, it is betting on a first mover and gaining critical engineering data. Third, launch bottlenecks are the most realistic constraint — with Falcon 9 retiring, Starship unproven, and competitor rockets delivering inconsistently, securing launch slots has become the top strategic issue for space startups. Finally, Starcloud is building production lines at a 100,000-square-foot facility in Woodinville, Washington, near where SpaceX and Amazon build satellites for their communications networks — clear supply-chain synergies. As more capital flows in and launch capacity gradually improves, orbital data centers will likely accelerate from sci-fi concept toward real-world deployment.