SpaceX's upcoming initial public offering this week is reshaping how venture capitalists think about space, enabling entrepreneurs with no aerospace experience to raise millions for ambitious orbital projects. The clearest sign of this shift: Euwyn Poon, who previously founded and sold e-scooter company Spin to Ford, just secured $5 million in seed funding to launch Orbital, a startup that plans to deploy 10,000 AI-processing satellites in space.

Poon's journey into space data centers reveals how much the venture industry's appetite for long-term, capital-intensive space projects has changed. After leaving Ford, he bought an Nvidia A100 graphics processing unit (GPU) on a whim, co-locating it in a Santa Clara data center to serve open-weight AI models. That hands-on experience convinced him there was real value in delivering computing power in the AI era. The next logical step, in his mind, was to move that compute to space.

Why Would Anyone Put Data Centers in Space?

The pitch sounds almost too good to be true: Earth-based AI data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and require extensive environmental reviews. Space offers unlimited sunshine for solar power and minimal regulatory overhead. The problem, however, is brutally simple: launching anything into orbit is expensive. Current rocket economics make the business case impossible to close.

That's where SpaceX's Starship comes in. Orbital, like many of its competitors, is betting that SpaceX will successfully deploy Starship as a commercial launch vehicle and dramatically reduce the cost of reaching orbit. "We will get to full scale when Starship comes online," Poon explained to TechCrunch. "The price of the Falcon 9, the current state of the art, makes this not economically feasible".

The space data center sector is already attracting serious capital. Starcloud, a rival startup, already has a GPU in orbit and plans to launch several more to generate income while waiting for Starship to enable full-scale deployment. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, has announced plans to launch data centers using its New Glenn launch vehicle. Even Cowboy Space Company, another space data center startup backed by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), recently decided to build its own rockets rather than wait for commercial launch options.

What Makes Orbital Different From Other Space Data Center Startups?

Orbital's founding team includes about a dozen people based in Los Angeles with experience at Amazon LEO (Low Earth Orbit), SpaceX, and Northrop Grumman. The company's immediate goal is modest: fly an Nvidia Blackwell chip on a partner's satellite to test Orbital's radiation shielding and thermal management technology. By 2028, Orbital hopes to launch its first data-processing spacecraft equipped with Nvidia's Space-1 Vera Rubin-class GPUs.

The company's long-term vision is ambitious. Orbital aims to deploy 10,000 satellites that collectively provide a distributed gigawatt of computing power, with each satellite delivering 100 kilowatts of power. For context, Elon Musk has said SpaceX expects its AI satellites to produce up to 150 kilowatts, while Starcloud is targeting larger 200-kilowatt spacecraft.

How to Understand the Space Data Center Timeline

• Near-term (2026-2027): Orbital will conduct demonstration flights with individual GPUs on partner satellites to validate thermal management and radiation protection systems before full-scale deployment.
• Mid-term (2028): The company plans to launch its first dedicated data-processing spacecraft with Nvidia's Vera Rubin-class GPUs, beginning to generate revenue through piece-wise inference work with each satellite launched.
• Long-term (2030s+): Orbital aims to deploy its full constellation of 10,000 satellites providing distributed computing power across orbit, contingent on Starship becoming a reliable, affordable launch option.

Poon's track record suggests he can manage the complexity of scaling an aerospace company. His experience deploying 250,000 e-scooters across 100 cities demonstrates his ability to handle logistics and rapid expansion. Andrew Chen, a partner at a16z's Speedrun accelerator program that backed Orbital, noted that venture firms are increasingly comfortable with decade-long timelines and billion-dollar budgets for space projects. "This kind of thing would have sounded crazy 10 years ago when we were all building mobile apps," Chen said. "Starting it in 2026 just lets you tap into all the energy and excitement that's happening in the capital markets".

Orbital's $5 million seed round included backing from a16z, Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent, Rubik, Zero Knowledge Ventures, LYVC, Feld Ventures, New Legacy, FNDR, UpHonest, and Asterisk.

Why Does SpaceX's IPO Matter for Space Data Centers?

The timing of Orbital's funding is no accident. SpaceX is set to launch its initial public offering on June 12, 2026, in what will be the largest IPO in history, with approximately $75 billion in shares coming to market and valuing the entire company at roughly $1.8 trillion. This massive capital influx and public market validation is reshaping how the venture industry views long-term space investments.

The IPO signals to investors that space infrastructure is becoming a legitimate, scalable business. For startups like Orbital, this means venture capitalists are willing to fund companies betting on Starship's eventual success, even though the rocket is still in development and hasn't yet achieved regular commercial flights. The broader message: space is no longer just for government agencies and billionaire vanity projects. It's becoming an asset class that venture firms believe can generate returns.

"There's so many lanes for companies in our space to pursue," Poon told TechCrunch, noting that different companies can pursue different AI workloads, designs, and concepts of what a space data center looks like.

Euwyn Poon, Founder and CEO of Orbital

The space data center sector's success ultimately depends on one critical variable: whether SpaceX can deliver on its promise to make Starship a reliable, affordable launch vehicle. If Starship succeeds, companies like Orbital could transform how the world delivers AI compute. If it doesn't, the entire sector faces a fundamental economics problem that no amount of venture capital can solve.