How an e-scooter founder raised $5 million to build space data centers

Euwyn Poon, known for founding the e-scooter company Spin, has successfully raised $5 million in seed funding for his new venture, Orbital. The startup aims to deploy space-based data centers for AI inference, betting on the future affordability of launch costs enabled by SpaceX’s Starship.

With a team composed of experts from companies like Amazon LEO and SpaceX, Orbital is currently developing radiation shielding and thermal management technology. The company plans to test its systems with Nvidia hardware on a demo flight, eventually aiming for a large-scale constellation that provides significant computing power. While challenges in launch economics remain, investors are increasingly supportive of such long-term, capital-intensive infrastructure projects.

(Source：TechCrunch)