Mar 30, 2026 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
Space data center company Starcloud has raised $170 million in a Series A round, valuing the firm at $1.1 billion.he round was completed in two tranches, with Benchmark leading the initial raise alongside EQT, and both firms co-leading the extension. Additional investors include Macquarie Capital, NFX, Nebular, Y Combinator, Adjacent, 776 Ventures, Fuse Ventures, Manhattan West, and Monolith Power Systems, along with angel investors such as Gen. Stephen Wilson, former Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, and former Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson.
"The AI revolution is colliding with the physical limits of our terrestrial energy grid. We are quickly running out of places to build new energy projects for data centers on Earth,” said Philip Johnston, co-founder and CEO of Starcloud. “By moving AI compute to space, we unlock access to unlimited solar power and completely remove the energy bottleneck. This funding allows us to rapidly scale our orbital infrastructure and meet the massive commercial demand for sustainable AI compute."
The company has raised $200 million to date. Investors include In-Q-Tel, NFX, Y Combinator, FUSE, Soma Capital, and scout funds from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia. As part of the latest funding round, Benchmark general partner Chetan Puttagunta will join the Starcloud board.
“We believe that we are in the early innings of a decades-long buildout of AI infrastructure,” said Puttagunta. “Starcloud is pioneering a solution to the challenges of scaling AI infrastructure on Earth with orbital data centers. Their extraordinary engineering team has achieved significant technical breakthroughs in power and cooling, as well as innovative advancements in manufacturing processes. Most notably, the great team at Starcloud has reached these milestones while remaining exceptionally capital efficient. We believe their technical rigor and remarkable ambitions will enable them to achieve extraordinary scale.”
