Euwyn Poon, the founder of the Spin scooter service, has raised $5 million for his startup, Orbital. The company plans to deploy artificial intelligence data centers into Earth’s orbit and expects to scale up once SpaceX launches the Starship rocket into commercial operation.
Demand and obstacles
The startup graduated from the Speedrun accelerator program run by the venture capital firm a16z in May. Other investors included Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, and several other funds.
The idea is based on the simple logic that demand for AI computing is growing faster than Earth’s infrastructure can keep up with. Space offers unlimited solar power and significantly fewer regulatory constraints.
Bet on Starship
The main obstacle right now is the cost of launching cargo into orbit. According to Euwyn Poon, the price of the Falcon 9 makes the business model unsustainable, so the company is counting on Starship to significantly reduce it.
A team of several dozen people in Los Angeles, made up of former employees from Amazon, SpaceX, and Northrop Grumman, plans to conduct a test launch of the Nvidia Blackwell chip in the near future, along with radiation protection and thermal management systems, aboard a partner company’s satellite.
Plans and competitors
In 2028, the company plans to launch its first data-processing satellite equipped with Nvidia Space-1 graphics processors of the Vera Rubin class. After that, each new satellite will generate revenue from computing services immediately upon reaching orbit, even before the full satellite constellation is deployed.
The ultimate goal is 10,000 satellites with a combined computing power of one gigawatt. By comparison, SpaceX expects its AI satellites to deliver up to 150 kW each, while competitor Starcloud is targeting 200 kW. Another market player, Cowboy Space Company, which is also backed by a16z, is already building its own rockets without waiting for Starship. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has announced plans to launch data centers on the New Glenn rocket.
Experience as an argument
Andrew Chen, a partner at a16z, explains his bet on Euwyn Poon based on his experience scaling electric scooter rental service Spin, as the company has deployed 250,000 scooters across 100 cities. The income received allowed us to raise $5 million for the construction of space data centers.
Euwyn Poon himself came up with the idea of space-based data centers through hands-on experience. After leaving Ford, he purchased an Nvidia A100 GPU, installed it in a data center in Santa Clara, and began offering computing services. This experience convinced him of the value of affordable computing power for AI. Now he wants to launch thousands of such processors into space.
According to techcrunch.com
