Nvidia and Cisco join $250 million funding round for orbital AI data center startup Starcloud

Space computing startup Starcloud has raised $250 million in a Series A extension funding round, valuing the company at $2.3 billion post-money as it scales infrastructure to build orbital AI data centers. The round was led by investment firm Manhattan West, with Nvidia and Cisco Investments joining as prominent new backers alongside returning venture investors including Benchmark, EQT, Soma, NFX, and 776.

Nvidia contributed approximately $25 million directly to the financing, bringing Starcloud's total capital raised to $450 million since its 2024 founding.

High-Performance Silicon in Orbit

Starcloud established an operational precedent in November 2025 by deploying a standard Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit aboard its Starcloud-1 satellite, marking the first time data-center-grade AI hardware was operated in low Earth orbit. Since the launch, Starcloud has used the flight hardware to train an AI model in space, run fine-tuning routines, and execute inference tasks on a version of Google's Gemini model.

The new capital will directly fund engineering collaborations with Nvidia to refine the Nvidia Space-1 Vera Rubin Module, a GPU platform purpose-built for harsh space environments. The module replaces standard air or liquid cooling systems with large thermal radiators and incorporates radiation-hardened components.

Starcloud’s core thesis centers on bypassing land, water, and power constraints facing terrestrial AI data centers by tapping into continuous solar power in orbit.

Scaling Satellite Production and Launch Allocations

Starcloud is utilizing the fresh funding to expand its 100,000-square-foot satellite manufacturing plant in Woodinville, Washington, where it is assembling its next-generation Starcloud-3 orbital data center spacecraft. Cisco Investments will collaborate on the optical networking, data transfer, and secure infrastructure pipelines connecting the orbital clusters back to terrestrial ground stations.

While Starcloud has submitted filings to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) outlining a long-term goal of an 88,000-satellite constellation delivering 20 gigawatts of orbital compute, its immediate focus remains procuring launch capacity and deploying two 8-kilowatt Starcloud-2 satellites for commercial inference tasks.