Starcloud Inc., a startup developing space-based artificial intelligence infrastructure, said it has raised $170 million in a new funding round that values the company at $1.1 billion, as interest grows in alternatives to terrestrial data centers.<\/p>\n
The funding was secured in two tranches, with Benchmark leading the first and co-leading the second alongside EQT Ventures. Additional participants included Monolith Power Systems Inc., a publicly traded chipmaker specializing in power management technologies.<\/p>\n
The raise comes roughly five months after the company launched its first satellite, Starcloud-1, into low-Earth orbit. The satellite carries an Nvidia H100 graphics processing unit, which Starcloud said has been used to train a custom AI model and run an algorithm from Google LLC\u2019s Gemini neural network series, according to reporting by SiliconANGLE.<\/p>\n
Chief executive and co-founder Philip Johnston said the company sees significant potential in moving compute infrastructure to space, citing energy availability as a key factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy moving AI compute to space, we unlock access to unlimited solar power and completely remove the energy bottleneck,\u201d Johnston said.<\/p>\n
Starcloud argues that orbital infrastructure could address several constraints faced by Earth-based data centers. Cooling systems on the ground typically rely on air or water to dissipate heat, whereas in space, excess heat must be radiated as infrared energy. While this approach introduces engineering challenges, it also allows for passive cooling systems that are less complex and consume less power.<\/p>\n
The company also plans to rely on solar energy to power its systems. Unlike terrestrial solar panels, which are affected by weather and day-night cycles, orbital panels can generate more consistent output. Starcloud estimates that such systems could produce up to five times more power than comparable installations on Earth.<\/p>\n
As part of its roadmap, Starcloud is preparing to launch a second satellite, Starcloud-2, later this year. The system will include what the company describes as the largest commercial deployable radiator sent to space and a solar array capable of generating 100 times more power than its predecessor. The satellite is expected to support AI workloads for multiple customers, including Crusoe Inc., an AI data center developer.<\/p>\n
Looking further ahead, the company aims to assemble a 5-gigawatt orbital data center using modular units referred to as containers. Each unit would host liquid-cooled AI servers along with networking and storage infrastructure, connected through high-capacity fiber-optic links.<\/p>\n
According to a technical paper published by the company, data transfer to orbit could be achieved using laser-based systems or docking modules launched from Earth. Starcloud estimates that the latter method could enable the transfer of petabytes of data per trip.<\/p>\n
In the near term, the newly raised capital will be used to expand manufacturing capabilities, increase staffing, and secure launch capacity as the company moves toward scaling its orbital computing platform.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Starcloud Inc., a startup developing space-based artificial intelligence infrastructure, said it has raised $170 million in a new funding round that values the company at $1.1 billion, as interest grows in alternatives to terrestrial data centers. The funding was secured in two tranches, with Benchmark leading the first and co-leading the second alongside EQT Ventures. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5798,6966,6967,3055,6968,5812,6176,5739,496,5841],"class_list":["post-20529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ai-infrastructure","tag-benchmark","tag-eqt-ventures","tag-google","tag-monolith-power-systems","tag-north-america","tag-philip-johnston","tag-space-technology","tag-starcloud","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}