--- title: Orbital raises $5M to build AI data centres in orbit description: Orbital, a Los Angeles startup, has raised a $5M pre-seed round led by a16z speedrun to build solar-powered AI data centres in low Earth orbit. The company... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-raises-5m-to-build-ai-data-centres-in-orbit-janpnycs8 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Orbital raises $5M to build AI data centres in orbit | daily.dev og:description: Orbital, a Los Angeles startup, has raised a $5M pre-seed round led by a16z speedrun to build solar-powered AI data centres in low Earth orbit. The company... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-raises-5m-to-build-ai-data-centres-in-orbit-janpnycs8 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/JaNPNyCS8.png og:image:alt: Orbital raises $5M to build AI data centres in orbit og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Orbital raises $5M to build AI data centres in orbit **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Orbital, a Los Angeles startup, has raised a $5M pre-seed round led by a16z speedrun to build solar-powered AI data centres in low Earth orbit. The company plans a 2027 SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare demo flight for its Pathfinder payload, followed by Orbital-1, a purpose-built compute satellite. The pitch targets AI's growing power and land constraints on Earth, proposing distributed small satellites using Nvidia Space-1 GPUs for AI inference, with a long-term vision of 100,000+ satellites delivering 10 gigawatts. The concept faces stiff competition from Starcloud ($170M raised), SpaceX's own orbital compute ambitions, and Google's orbital compute deal, plus serious physical challenges around heat dissipation in vacuum — a problem SpaceX itself flagged as unproven in its pre-IPO filing. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Orbital Inference Data Center Bets On Space GPUs](https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-inference-data-center-bets-on-space-gpus-1tc8u7ied) · IEEE Spectrum · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [SpaceX S-1 warns orbital AI data centres may not be viable, months after Musk called space-based AI a no-brainer](https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-s-1-warns-orbital-ai-data-centres-may-not-be-viable-months-after-musk-called-space-based-ai--eekyojlmn) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#nvidia](https://daily.dev/tags/nvidia), [#spacex](https://daily.dev/tags/spacex), [#ai-infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-infrastructure) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-raises-5m-to-build-ai-data-centres-in-orbit-janpnycs8) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Orbital raises $5M to build AI data centres in orbit","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-raises-5m-to-build-ai-data-centres-in-orbit-janpnycs8","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-raises-5m-to-build-ai-data-centres-in-orbit-janpnycs8"},"datePublished":"2026-06-09T13:16:31.233Z","dateModified":"2026-06-09T16:11:09.748Z","description":"Orbital, a Los Angeles startup, has raised a $5M pre-seed round led by a16z speedrun to build solar-powered AI data centres in low Earth orbit. 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