{"id":554273,"date":"2026-03-30T13:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T13:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/554273\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T13:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T13:52:11","slug":"starcloud-reaches-1-1-billion-valuation-as-ai-space-race-heats-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/554273\/","title":{"rendered":"Starcloud reaches $1.1 billion valuation as AI space race heats up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">By Akash Sriram<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">March 30 (Reuters) &#8211; Orbital compute infrastructure startup Starcloud has raised $170 million at a $1.1 billion valuation, as companies including Elon Musk&#8217;s \u200cSpaceX and <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/topic\/jeff-bezos\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:Jeff Bezos;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Jeff Bezos&quot;}\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jeff Bezos<\/a>&#8216; Blue Origin race to move power-hungry AI data \u200ccenters off-planet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures, the fundraise underscores surging investor appetite for space infrastructure \u200bbets as massive AI computing requirements strain terrestrial energy grids and data center capacity, even as space-based systems offer access to near-continuous solar power.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Starcloud, which has long-term plans for an 88,000-satellite data center constellation, will use the new capital to \u200cfund next-generation satellites, manufacturing expansion \u2060and future launch contracts as it moves toward commercial operations, it said on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">&#8220;The main customer contracts that are committed \u2060are for other spacecraft, particularly Earth Observation and DOW satellites. We are also working on some binding energy offtake agreements with the hyperscalers to be announced in the coming months,&#8221; \u200bco-founder \u200band CEO Philip Johnston told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">In February, \u200bElon Musk&#8217;s SpaceX acquired his AI \u200cstartup xAI and revealed plans for a million-satellite orbital data center network. Blue Origin, the space venture of Amazon&#8217;s Jeff Bezos, has expressed similar ambitions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Meanwhile, Starcloud is already working with partners including <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/quote\/NVDA\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:Nvidia;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Nvidia&quot;}\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nvidia<\/a> and the cloud units of Amazon and Google.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">In November, it launched a satellite carrying Nvidia&#8217;s H100 chip, demonstrating AI \u200ctraining and inference in orbit in an \u200bindustry-first move.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">It now plans a second launch in October \u200bfeaturing Amazon Web Services&#8217; AWS Outposts \u200boffering.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">While space infrastructure would ease power and land constraints, high \u200claunch costs remain a challenge. But Starcloud \u200bexpects them to \u200bfall enough by 2028 or 2029 to make space-based data centers cost-competitive with Earth facilities, Johnston said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">The latest round brings Starcloud&#8217;s total funding to $200 \u200bmillion, with the Redmond, \u200cWashington-based company having raised $34 million earlier from investors including Andreessen Horowitz \u200band In-Q-Tel, the Central Intelligence Agency&#8217;s venture capital firm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">(Reporting by Akash \u200bSriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Akash Sriram March 30 (Reuters) &#8211; Orbital compute infrastructure startup Starcloud has raised $170 million at a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[17179,7258,11,1168,246393,79,193,222601,143633],"class_list":{"0":"post-554273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-blue-origin","9":"tag-data-centers","10":"tag-elon-musk","11":"tag-jeff-bezos","12":"tag-philip-johnston","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-space-infrastructure","16":"tag-starcloud"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}