Orbital raises USD $5 million for AI compute satellites
Mon, 15th Jun 2026 (Today)
Orbital has raised USD $5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by a16z speedrun.
The Los Angeles-based space infrastructure company will use the funding to support its Pathfinder in-orbit technology demonstration and early work on Orbital-1, its planned first purpose-built satellite for AI compute.
Other investors included Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent, Rubik, Zero Knowledge Ventures, LYVC, Feld Ventures, New Legacy, FNDR, UpHonest and Asterisk.
Orbital is developing satellites to host computing workloads in low Earth orbit. Its approach centres on a distributed network of smaller satellites rather than a single large orbital structure.
The funding comes as energy demand from data centres rises sharply. Citing International Energy Agency projections, Orbital said global data centre electricity consumption will more than double to 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, comparable to Japan's annual electricity use.
According to the company, grid constraints, cooling requirements, land availability and permitting are also adding pressure to terrestrial data centre expansion.
Euwyn Poon, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Orbital, outlined the company's case for moving compute infrastructure into orbit.
"The sun is the most abundant and accessible source of energy in the universe, yet we've barely begun to tap into it," said Euwyn Poon, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Orbital. "Orbital is turning that energy directly into intelligence. We're building AI data centers in orbit, where solar power is continuous and heat dissipates into the void of space. Advances in launch infrastructure are making this an imminent reality, not science fiction. This infrastructure will power intelligence for the planet."
Orbital is focusing on AI inference, which it identified as the fastest-growing area of compute demand. Its systems are being designed around NVIDIA's publicly announced Space-1 Vera Rubin-class GPU architecture.
The company said each satellite is being engineered around three features it believes are difficult to replicate on the ground: uninterrupted solar energy, radiative cooling into space and compute distributed across satellites.
Pathfinder mission
Pathfinder, the company's first mission, is scheduled to fly a hosted GPU payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare in 2027. The mission is intended to test GPU operation, radiation tolerance, thermal performance and data downlink in orbit.
It is due to be followed by Orbital-1, which Orbital described as its first purpose-built orbital compute satellite. Production satellites are being designed for 100 kW of compute power, with a longer-term plan for a constellation of more than 100,000 satellites delivering over 10 GW of orbital compute.
Orbital is also developing Factory-1, a satellite assembly and testing facility in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, as it moves towards manufacturing at greater scale.
Poon said the company is working to solve difficult technical challenges as it builds the system.
"At Orbital, we're assembling a team that combines decades of aerospace engineering experience with a novel problem-solving mindset," said Poon. "We're tackling some of the hardest engineering challenges in the industry, including extreme thermal management and design for manufacturability, at a satellite size and constellation scale that has never been attempted before."