Starcloud, a startup building satellites capable of running AI inference in orbit, has secured a $250 million extension to its March Series A round of $170 million, the company told TechCrunch on August 21. The extension brings the company's valuation to $2.3 billion. CEO Philip Johnston said the fresh capital will fund a larger manufacturing plant and push forward development of Starcloud-3, the company's biggest orbital data center spacecraft designed to fly aboard SpaceX's future Starship rocket.
The new funds will also help Starcloud lock down rocket transportation as launch availability grows scarcer, according to Johnston. The company has already filed with the FCC for authorization to operate 88,000 spacecraft. Starcloud is currently preparing to launch two of its next-generation 8 kW compute satellites, called Starcloud-2, on rideshare missions in 2027, with customers including U.S. government agencies. The company is weighing options like purchasing a dedicated Falcon 9 launch and signing deals with other providers to support upcoming missions. Manhattan West Ventures led the funding extension, with participation from Nvidia, Cisco, Benchmark, EQT, Soma, NFX, 776, Cedar Capital, Goanna Capital, and Standard Capital; a source familiar with the transaction said Nvidia contributed $25 million. The company now employs 25 people and is building production lines at a 100,000-square-foot facility in Woodinville, Washington.
"We can see what's coming — we're going to need to book an enormous amount of launch," Johnston told TechCrunch. He added that securing launch capacity has become one of the largest expenses, noting that "launch is pretty constrained right now because [SpaceX's] Falcon 9 program is scheduled to end in 2028." Johnston acknowledged the challenge ahead: "Obviously if we can't book any SpaceX launch capacity in 2029, that will be challenging for us." He also pointed to Nvidia's investment as validation of Starcloud's position in the emerging space compute sector, saying the chipmaker "did way more technical duty on this than anybody else" because of data gathered from Starcloud One.
The funding comes as SpaceX prepares to retire its Falcon 9 workhorse in 2028 and transition to the much larger but still unproven Starship vehicle, complicating planning for satellite operators. Competing rockets like Blue Origin's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan aren't flying regularly yet, and newer vehicles such as Rocket Lab's Neutron haven't reached the launch pad. Launch costs already represent one of the toughest obstacles for orbital data center startups — enough that at least one competitor has chosen to develop its own rockets. Starcloud's business model depends on Starship bringing down launch costs sufficiently to create an orbital inference layer that can rival ground-based data centers, and Johnston said he remains confident SpaceX can prove the world's most powerful rocket can be reused quickly and frequently. This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced his company will postpone an attempt to catch a returning Starship rocket for several months and will try to re-fly the vehicle for the first time in late 2026 or early 2027.
Johnston said Starcloud is the only known company currently operating a Nvidia H100 terrestrial data center GPU in orbit and the first to train a model with it, while most other space GPUs are built for edge processing. The company is sharing those findings with Nvidia as the chipmaker develops its first space-specific GPU, the Vera Rubin Space-1 chip, which hasn't been manufactured yet but which Starcloud hopes to fly in late 2028. Starcloud engineers are monitoring several critical design factors: how the chip's operating temperature relates to the size of heat-dispersing radiators, where to position radiation shielding, and what level of ruggedization the chips need to withstand a rocket launch. As the Starship timeline remains uncertain and launch slots tighten across the industry, Starcloud's ability to deliver on its orbital AI vision will hinge on whether it can secure the rocket capacity Johnston sees coming into short supply. The company's race to contract for Starship launches before 2029 reflects a broader shift in the space sector, where access to orbit may soon matter as much as the technology being sent there.