Starcloud Raises $250 Million at $2.3 Billion Valuation to Scale AI with Orbital Data Centers

Starcloud Raises $250 Million at $2.3 Billion Valuation to Scale AI with Orbital Data Centers

Manhattan West leads, with participation from NVIDIA, Cisco Investments, Benchmark, and EQT, as Starcloud and NVIDIA collaborate on the NVIDIA Space-1 Vera Rubin Module

Starcloud, the company pioneering data centers in space, today announced a $250 million Series A extension funding round at a $2.3 billion post-money valuation. The round was led by Manhattan West, with participation from existing investors Benchmark, EQT, Soma, NFX, 776, and others, alongside new investors NVIDIA, Cisco Investments, Cedar Capital, Goanna Capital, Standard Capital, and others. The funding brings Starcloud's total capital raised to $450 million since its founding in 2024.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260821884035/en/

Starcloud founders from left: Ezra Feilden (CTO), Philip Johnston (CEO), Adi Oltean (Chief Engineer)

Starcloud’s collaboration with NVIDIA began when the company flew the first NVIDIA H100 GPU to orbit aboard its Starcloud-1 satellite in November 2025. As announced in March 2026, the two companies are now working together on NVIDIA's Space-1 Vera Rubin Module.

"Last November we put the first NVIDIA H100 in orbit. Today this fresh capital empowers us to build the infrastructure to launch many more of NVIDIA's most advanced GPUs into space.”
— Philip Johnston, Co-Founder and CEO, Starcloud

The NVIDIA Space-1 Vera Rubin Module is built for extreme conditions in space, where cooling is primarily via large radiators and components must withstand radiation exposure. Starcloud's satellites are expected to serve as an early flight platform for space-rated hardware, building on the flight data gathered since Starcloud-1's successful H100 deployment in November 2025.

Since launching Starcloud-1, the company has delivered a string of orbital computing firsts. It trained the first AI model in space. It ran the first version of Google's Gemini in orbit. It demonstrated high-powered inference and fine-tuning on flight hardware. It also evolved operations and general procedures for running high-performance GPUs on orbit.

Starcloud is progressing toward its vision of a constellation of 88,000 satellites and 20 gigawatts of orbital compute capacity. Development of production lines for its next-generation Starcloud-3 spacecraft is underway at a new 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Woodinville, Washington.

Cisco joined the round as a new investor, adding networking, optical, and AI infrastructure expertise to Starcloud's roster of backers.

“Cisco has long been a leader in secure data center infrastructure and looks forward to bringing that expertise to the emerging world of orbital data centers,” said Aleem Rizvon, vice president, Cisco Investments. “Cisco Investments is excited to invest in Starcloud as they expand data centers into space.”

Ken Abdalla and Lauren Selig led the round from Manhattan West, and Lauren Selig joins as a board observer. The additional capital will fund continued buildout of manufacturing capacity, engineering work in collaboration with NVIDIA, as well as procurement of future launch allocation.

About Starcloud

Starcloud is building data centers in space to solve the AI energy bottleneck. Starcloud launched its first satellite, Starcloud-1, in November 2025. It featured the first data center-grade GPU on board, approximately 100x more powerful GPU compute than had previously been in orbit, and was the first to train an AI model in space. Founded in 2024, Starcloud is headquartered at 2517 152nd Ave NE, Redmond, WA 98052.

Media Contact:
David Niu
Delight Labs
david@delightlabs.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260821884035/en/