Starcloud wants data centers in space. The Redmond, Washington startup just hit unicorn status. Now it’s chasing a $2.2 billion valuation—barely a month later.
Two-year-old Starcloud told investors it’s discussing a raise of at least $200 million, according to The Information. That would double its March mark of $1.1 billion. SpaceX’s looming IPO hype fuels the fire. Investors see orbital compute as the next big bet.
Founded in January 2024 as Lumen Orbit, Starcloud rebranded early on. Philip Johnston serves as CEO and co-founder. Ezra Feilden is CTO. Adi Oltean handles chief engineer duties. They hail from SpaceX’s Starlink, Airbus, McKinsey. Small team. Just 30 employees.
And they moved fast. In November 2025, a SpaceX rocket lofted Starcloud-1. That 130-pound satellite packed an Nvidia H100 GPU. First ever in orbit for AI. It trained a large language model up there. Ran Google’s Gemini too. Skeptics scoffed at first. “People said it was impossible,” Johnston recalled to GeekWire.
From Unicorn Sprint to SpaceX Shadow
March brought the $170 million Series A. Valuation: $1.1 billion. Led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures. Total funding hit $200 million. Earlier backers included Andreessen Horowitz, In-Q-Tel—the CIA’s venture arm. Angels like ex-Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg joined in, per Reuters.
Benchmark’s Chetan Puttagunta joined the board. Funds will scale satellites. Expand manufacturing. Lock launch contracts. Starcloud eyes 88,000 satellites long-term. Gigawatt-scale power in orbit.
Starcloud-2 launches later this year. Expect Nvidia Blackwell chips. An AWS server blade. Even bitcoin mining gear. Starcloud-3? A three-ton beast for SpaceX’s Starship. Fits their satellite dispenser. But delays? No sweat. Falcon 9 works fine for now, Johnston told TechCrunch. “We’re not going to be competitive on energy costs until Starship is flying frequently.”
Earth’s AI boom strains grids. Data centers guzzle power. Politics block new builds. Space offers sun nonstop. Cooling from vacuum. No water fights. “We need to start looking for new ways,” Johnston said to GeekWire. “What we’re doing is the most sensible.”
But SpaceX looms large. Elon Musk’s empire bought xAI. Plans a million-satellite compute fleet. For Grok and Tesla workloads, Johnston figures. Not open cloud. “They’re building for a slightly different use case than us,” he noted to TechCrunch. Starcloud sells power to other satellites first. Analyzes orbital data. Later, pulls jobs from ground when launches cheapen to $500 per kilo.
Compute Race in Orbit Heats Up
Competitors circle. Aetherflux raises Series B at $2 billion valuation. Google’s Project Suncatcher tests TPUs aloft. Aethero flew Nvidia Jetsons in 2025. Blue Origin dreams big too. Dozens of GPUs orbit now. Versus millions on Earth.
Challenges abound. Radiation fries chips. Heat buildup. Power limits. An early Nvidia A6000 died on launch. Starcloud added shielding. ISS-style cooling. Biggest radiator yet on Starcloud-2.
Investors buy the vision anyway. YC’s fastest unicorn ever—17 months post-demo day. The Information scoop hit X hard. Reporter Theo Wayt called it a 2x in a month. Amid SpaceX’s $2 trillion IPO buzz.
So does it work? Starcloud proves chips run hot in vacuum. Gathers telemetry no one else has. “We’ve got the best team. We’re two years ahead,” Johnston boasted to GeekWire.
Risks remain. Starship cadence. Laser links for synced GPUs. Capex mountains. But AI hunger grows. Earth hits limits. Orbit beckons.
Johnston eyes a decade out. Satellite centers as fastest-growing compute slice. Then dominant. Starcloud leads the pack. For now.
WebProNews is an iEntry Publication