E-Scooter Founder Raises $5 Million to Build Space Data Centers

One telling metric for SpaceX's IPO this week is how the company has reshaped venture capital's view of long-term, capital-intensive space ventures. A talented founder with no prior space experience can now secure funding for a space data center startup.

Orbital, a startup that emerged in May from a16z’s Speedrun accelerator with a $5 million seed round, is the latest to promise in-space inference — once Starship begins regular flights. Other backers include Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent, Rubik, Zero Knowledge Ventures, LYVC, Feld Ventures, New Legacy, FNDR, UpHonest, and Asterisk.

Founder and CEO Euwyn Poon previously founded the e-scooter company Spin in 2017 and sold it to Ford a year later, joining the automaker. When he was ready to start a new venture, a16z’s Speedrun was keen to participate, according to partner Andrew Chen, who told TechCrunch that Poon explored several ideas before settling on space data centers.

You've heard the pitch before. The demand for AI compute is insatiable, and deploying it on Earth is proceeding slowly. Why not move to space, with its endless sunshine and minimal environmental reviews? The main hurdle is the brutal economics of launching into orbit, which currently prevents the business case from closing.

Orbital, like many of its competitors, is betting that SpaceX will perfect its Starship rocket and offer 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 his team — about a dozen people in Los Angeles, with experience at Amazon LEO, SpaceX, and Northrop Grumman — are working toward a demo flight. The company will fly an Nvidia Blackwell chip on a partner’s satellite to test Orbital’s radiation shielding and thermal management technology. In 2028, it hopes to launch its first data-processing spacecraft with Nvidia’s Space-1 Vera Rubin-class GPUs.

At that point, the company aims to begin piecemeal inference work, generating revenue with each satellite launched. That mirrors the path of rival data center startup Starcloud, which already has a GPU in orbit and plans to launch several more to generate income until Starship allows them to deploy their full constellation.

Orbital’s goal is to deploy 10,000 satellites providing a distributed gigawatt of computing power, with each satellite offering 100 kW. For context, Elon Musk has said SpaceX expects its AI satellites to produce up to 150 kW, while Starcloud plans to field larger 200 kW-rated spacecraft to run chips.

Some companies are unwilling to wait for Starship. Cowboy Space Company, another space data center startup backed by a16z, recently decided to build its own rockets. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin also announced plans to launch data centers into orbit using its New Glenn launch vehicle.

Poon is confident that the breadth of AI demand will allow many companies to thrive. "There are so many lanes for companies in our space to pursue," he told TechCrunch, before listing an array of options, including firms pursuing different AI workloads, designs, and concepts of what a space data center looks like.

Chen noted that Poon’s experience scaling a company that deployed 250,000 scooters across 100 cities demonstrates his ability to manage the challenging 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 now more comfortable with such timelines.

"This kind of thing would have sounded crazy 10 years ago when we were all building mobile apps," he said. "Starting it in 2026 just lets you tap into all the energy and excitement happening in the capital markets."

Poon found his way into the space data center business through a circuitous route. After leaving Ford, he bought an Nvidia A100 on a whim, co-located it in a Santa Clara data center, and served open-weight models. That first-hand experience convinced him of the value in delivering compute in the AI era.

Now he just needs to put a few thousand GPUs in space.