Starcloud has added $250 million to its Series A funding round, bringing the total raised in the round to $420 million and valuing the orbital computing startup at $2.3 billion. The company plans to use the new capital to expand manufacturing, secure launch capacity, and develop Starcloud-3, its largest planned orbital data center spacecraft.
The extension follows a $170 million Series A announced in March. Manhattan West Ventures led the latest financing, with participation from Nvidia, Cisco, Benchmark, EQT, Soma, NFX, 776, Cedar Capital, Goanna Capital, and Standard Capital.
A person familiar with the deal told TechCrunch that Nvidia invested $25 million.
Starcloud Is Trying to Secure Launch Capacity Early
CEO Philip Johnston said one of the company’s biggest expenses is now reserving enough rocket capacity for future deployments. Starcloud has already asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to operate as many as 88,000 spacecraft.
The company ultimately wants to launch Starcloud-3 on SpaceX’s Starship. Johnston said securing future Starship contracts has become important because launch capacity is constrained and SpaceX plans to phase out Falcon 9 in 2028.
Planning remains difficult because Starship has not yet entered regular commercial service. Competing rockets such as Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan are also not flying frequently, while Rocket Lab’s Neutron has yet to launch.
Starcloud is considering buying a dedicated Falcon 9 mission and signing agreements with other launch providers to support its expansion.
Two Starcloud-2 Satellites Are Planned for 2027
Before Starcloud-3, the company plans to launch two 8-kilowatt Starcloud-2 compute satellites on rideshare missions in 2027. Those spacecraft will perform AI inference in orbit for customers that include U.S. government agencies.
Starcloud’s business model depends heavily on launch costs falling enough for orbital computing to compete with terrestrial data centers. Johnston said he remains confident that reusable Starship flights can eventually lower those costs.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said this week that the company is delaying an attempt to catch a returning Starship by several months. SpaceX is also targeting the first reflight of a Starship vehicle for late 2026 or early 2027.
Nvidia Is Working With Starcloud on Space GPUs
Starcloud says it currently operates an Nvidia H100 data center GPU in orbit and has used the chip to train a model. The company is sharing data from that work with Nvidia as the chipmaker develops Vera Rubin Space-1, its first GPU designed specifically for space.
Starcloud hopes to fly the new chip in late 2028. Its engineers are studying chip temperature, radiator size, radiation shielding, and the reinforcement needed for hardware to survive a rocket launch.
The company currently employs 25 people and is expanding production at a 100,000-square-foot facility in Woodinville, Washington, near satellite manufacturing operations run by SpaceX and Amazon.
Featured image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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