Nvidia Invests in Startup Building AI Data Centers in Space

U.S. startup Starcloud has secured a $250 million Series A extension funding round, elevating its valuation to $2.3 billion. The financing was led by Manhattan West, with major backing from new investors Nvidia and Cisco, alongside existing stakeholders Benchmark and EQT. Starcloud plans to alleviate terrestrial energy and cooling bottlenecks by constructing orbital data centers. Following the successful November 2025 launch of its Starcloud-1 satellite carrying an Nvidia H100 GPU, the company demonstrated the viability of running AI workloads and Google's Gemini model in space. Starcloud is now collaborating with Nvidia to engineer the Space-1 Vera Rubin module tailored for radiation-heavy and vacuum conditions. The startup ultimately aims to deploy a constellation of 88,000 satellites delivering 20 gigawatts of computing power. This initiative seeks to bypass Earth-bound constraints by tapping into continuous solar power and radiative cooling systems.