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- Source: inbox/queue/2026-03-30-techstartups-starcloud-170m-series-a-tier-roadmap.md - Domain: space-development - Claims: 2, Entities: 1 - Enrichments: 3 - Extracted by: pipeline ingest (OpenRouter anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5) Pentagon-Agent: Astra <PIPELINE>
46 lines
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2.5 KiB
Markdown
46 lines
No EOL
2.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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type: entity
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entity_type: company
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name: Starcloud
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domain: space-development
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founded: ~2024
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headquarters: San Francisco, CA
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status: active
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tags: [orbital-data-center, ODC, AI-compute, thermal-management, YC-backed]
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---
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# Starcloud
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**Type:** Orbital data center provider
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**Status:** Active (Series A, March 2026)
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**Headquarters:** San Francisco, CA
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**Backing:** Y Combinator
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## Overview
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Starcloud develops orbital data centers (ODCs) for AI compute workloads, positioning space as offering superior economics through unlimited solar power (>95% capacity factor) and free radiative cooling. Company slogan: "demand for compute outpaces Earth's limits."
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## Three-Tier Roadmap
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| Satellite | Launch Vehicle | Launch Date | Capability |
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|-----------|---------------|-------------|------------|
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| Starcloud-1 | Falcon 9 rideshare | November 2025 | 60 kg SmallSat, NVIDIA H100, first AI workload in orbit (trained NanoGPT on Shakespeare, ran Gemma) |
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| Starcloud-2 | Falcon 9 dedicated | Late 2026 | 100x power generation over Starcloud-1, NVIDIA Blackwell B200 + AWS blades, largest commercial deployable radiator |
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| Starcloud-3 | Starship | TBD | 88,000-satellite constellation, GW-scale AI compute for hyperscalers (OpenAI named as target customer) |
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## Technology
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**Thermal Management:** Proprietary radiative cooling system claiming $0.002-0.005/kWh cooling costs versus terrestrial data center active cooling. Starcloud-2 will test the largest commercial deployable radiator ever sent to space.
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**Target Market:** Hyperscale AI compute providers. OpenAI explicitly named as target customer for Starcloud-3 constellation.
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## Timeline
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- **November 2025** — Starcloud-1 launched on Falcon 9 rideshare. First orbital AI workload demonstration (trained NanoGPT on Shakespeare, ran Google's Gemma LLM).
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- **March 30, 2026** — Raised $170M Series A at $1.1B valuation. Largest funding round in orbital compute sector to date.
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- **Late 2026** — Starcloud-2 scheduled launch on dedicated Falcon 9. 100x power increase, first commercial-scale radiative cooling test.
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- **TBD** — Starcloud-3 constellation deployment on Starship. 88,000-satellite target, GW-scale compute. No timeline given, indicating dependency on Starship economics.
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## Strategic Position
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Starcloud's roadmap instantiates the tier-specific launch cost threshold model: rideshare for proof-of-concept, dedicated launch for commercial-scale testing, Starship for constellation economics. The company is structurally dependent on Starship achieving routine operations for its full business model (Starcloud-3) to activate. |