Orbital, a new firm that emerged in May from a16z’s startup accelerator program Speedrun, is the latest company promising to do inference in space. The company has secured a $5 million seed round with investors including Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, and others.
The founder and CEO of Orbital, Euwyn Poon, previously founded e-scooter company Spin in 2017 and sold it to Ford a year later. When he was ready to start a new company, a16z’s Speedrun was eager to get on board. According to partner Andrew Chen, Poon worked through several ideas before landing on space data centers.
The main problem is the brutal economics of launching stuff into orbit, which currently leaves the business case unable to close. Orbital, like many of its competitors, is betting on SpaceX figuring out its Starship rocket and offering it to commercial customers. “We will get to full scale when Starship comes online,” Poon explained.
The price of the Falcon 9, the current state of the art, “makes this not economically feasible.” For now, Poon and company are working toward a demo flight that will see the company fly an Nvidia Blackwell chip on a partner’s satellite to test Orbital’s radiation shielding and thermal management tech.
In 2028, the company hopes to launch its first data-processing spacecraft with Nvidia’s Space-1 Vera Rubin-class GPUs. At that point, the company wants to start doing piece-wise inference work, which would allow it to generate revenue with each satellite launched.
Orbital’s goal is to deploy 10,000 satellites that provide a distributed gigawatt of computing power, with each satellite providing 100 kw of power. For comparison, Elon Musk said SpaceX expects its AI satellites produce up to 150 kw, and Starcloud expects to field larger 200 kw-rated spacecraft to run chips.
Some companies are too impatient to wait for Starship. Cowboy Space Company, another space data center startup backed by a16z, recently decided to start building its own rockets. Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin also announced plans to launch data centers into space using its New Glenn launch vehicle.
Poon is confident that the breadth of AI demand will allow many companies to succeed. “There’s so many lanes for companies in our space to pursue,” he told TechCrunch, before rattling off an array of choices that included companies pursuing different AI workloads, designs, and concepts of what an space data center looks like.
Chen said that Poon’s experience scaling up a company that deployed 250,000 scooters across 100 cities shows he can manage the tricky task of building an aerospace company. Over the long term, a project like this might take a decade and $5 billion or more, but Chen said venture firms are more comfortable with timelines like that.
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