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

In a remarkable shift within the venture capital landscape, the founder of a successful e-scooter company is venturing into the realm of space data centers. Euwyn Poon, who previously founded Spin, has launched a new startup named Orbital, which recently secured $5 million in seed funding through a16z's Speedrun accelerator program. This ambitious initiative aims to harness the limitless potential of space for AI computation, pending the operational success of SpaceX's Starship. Orbital's funding comes from a diverse group of investors, including Basis Set, Human Element, and Wayfinder, among others. Poon's journey began with Spin, which he sold to Ford, and he’s now focused on addressing the increasing demand for AI computing power—a challenge exacerbated by slow deployment on Earth. The concept is straightforward: utilize the abundant sunlight and reduced regulatory hurdles in space to facilitate faster AI processing. However, the economics of launching equipment into orbit present a significant challenge. Currently, the high costs associated with existing launch vehicles like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 render the business model difficult to sustain. Poon emphasized that Orbital’s growth hinges on the successful rollout of SpaceX’s Starship, which promises a more economically viable solution for launching into space. As of now, the team at Orbital, consisting of around a dozen skilled professionals from notable companies such as Amazon LEO and SpaceX, is preparing for a demonstration flight. This flight will test their radiation shielding and thermal management technology by deploying an Nvidia Blackwell chip aboard a partner's satellite. The company aims to launch its first data-processing spacecraft by 2028, equipped with advanced Nvidia Space-1 GPUs, and begin generating revenue through incremental inference tasks with each launched satellite. Orbital has set an ambitious target of deploying 10,000 satellites to create a distributed computing network capable of delivering a gigawatt of power, with each satellite contributing 100 kilowatts. This vision aligns with similar aspirations from competitors like Starcloud, which has already placed a GPU in orbit and plans to expand its fleet. While some startups, such as Cowboy Space Company, are opting to develop their own launch vehicles due to impatience with current options, Poon remains optimistic about the myriad opportunities in the burgeoning field of space data centers. With his background in scaling operations—having previously deployed 250,000 scooters across numerous cities—he is well-prepared to navigate the complexities of the aerospace industry. Venture capitalists are increasingly willing to invest in long-term projects like Poon’s, with expectations that the timelines for such ventures will evolve. "This type of initiative would have seemed outrageous a decade ago, but the landscape is changing, and the excitement in capital markets is palpable," noted a16z partner Andrew Chen. With a vision to propel compute power into space, Poon's journey is just beginning, and the potential remains vast.