The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines for companies and organizations. (December 2025) |
| Founded | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Philip Johnston, Adi Oltean, Ezra Fielden |
| Website | www |
Starcloud, Inc., commonly known as Starcloud, is a United States–based company that designs, builds, and deploys data centers in space.[1][2][3][4]
History
[edit]The company was founded in early 2024 under the name Lumen Orbit by Philip Johnston (ex-McKinsey & Company), Adi Oltean (ex-SpaceX, Microsoft Azure) and Ezra Fielden (ex-Airbus Defence and Space).[1]
In Summer 2024, the company released a white paper[5][6][7] and went through the Y Combinator startup accelerator in San Francisco, where they were selected by Tom Blomfield.[8]
In March 2025, the company rebranded to Starcloud after a legal challenge from Lumen Technologies and raised additional seed funding, bringing the total to approximately $34M.[9][10][11][12] Investors include the scout funds of Sequoia and A16z, In-Q-Tel, NFX, Plug and Play, as well as angels, including AI expert Jan Leike.[13]
In November 2025, Starcloud launched its first satellite, designated Starcloud-1, equipped with a Nvidia H100 GPU. The company described the mission as the first deployment of "data-center-class GPU compute" in orbit.[14][15][16][17]
Starcloud stated that the project aimed to explore how orbital conditions, including continuous solar exposure and radiative cooling, could support large-scale computing in space.[18][19][20]
In December 2025, Starcloud became the first company to operate a large language model on a high powered GPU (Gemini's Gemma, developed by Google DeepMind) onboard a spacecraft, and the first to perform in-orbit training of a large language model (nanoGPT, developed by Andrej Karpathy).[21][22][23][24]
Partnerships
[edit]Starcloud was selected as a member of the Nvidia Inception program. [25][26]
In October 2025, Crusoe and Starcloud announced an agreement, as Crusoe will deploy its "Crusoe Cloud" platform on a Starcloud satellite planned for late 2026. Under this agreement, GPU capacity from orbit is expected to be offered from early 2027.[27][28]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Werner, John. "Lumen Orbit Wants To Put Data Centers In Space". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2025-01-09. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "The answer to tech's clean energy problem? Put data centres in space". www.thetimes.com. 2025-01-05. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "The plans to put data centres into orbit and on the moon". www.bbc.com. 2025-04-09. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Space data centres: powering AI with solar energy". World Economic Forum. Archived from the original on 2025-07-10. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Lumen Orbit wants to deploy data centers in space". Network World. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ Monsanto, ByBrianna. "The future of data centers is above the clouds". IT Brew. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ Feilden, Ezra; Oltean, Adi; Johnston, Philip (September 2024). "Why we should train AI in space" (PDF). Starcloud (formerly Lumen Orbit). Retrieved 20 December 2025.
- ^ "Lumen Orbit Advances Space-Based AI Data Centers with $10M Funding and Nvidia Partnership". Space Insider. 2024-10-28. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Lumen Orbit rebrands to Starcloud, raises another $10m for in-orbit data centers". www.datacenterdynamics.com. 2025-03-03. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Lumen Orbit changes its name to Starcloud and raises $10M for space data centers". GeekWire. 2025-02-26. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ Szkutak, Rebecca (2024-10-24). "Exclusive: Lumen Orbit closed one of the biggest rounds from Y Combinator's last cohort". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ Eaton, Kit (2024-10-25). "Here's How a Startup Landed $10 Million to Put AI Data Centers in Space". Inc. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ Szkutak, Rebecca (2024-12-11). "200 VCs wanted to get into Lumen Orbit's $11M seed round". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Nvidia-backed start up Starcloud sends AI-equipped satellite to space". NBC News. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Starcloud-1 with NVIDIA GPU takes AI to space in November because the world is not enough". FE Tech Bytes. 2025-10-28. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ say, Sebastian Moss Have your (2025-11-03). "Starcloud-1 satellite reaches space, with Nvidia H100 GPU now operating in orbit". www.datacenterdynamics.com. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "SpaceX". SpaceX. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ Kurt Knutsson, CyberGuy Report (2025-10-31). "A supercomputer chip going to space could change life on Earth". Fox News. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ Fork’, ‘HARD (2025-11-26). "Video: How Will Starcloud Build Data Centers in Space?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Starcloud, cette start-up veut mettre les data centers et les IA au frais, dans l'espace". BFM (in French). 2025-10-20. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "'Greetings, earthlings': Nvidia-backed Starcloud trains first AI model in space as orbital data center race heats up". CNBC. 2025-12-10. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "An AI Model Has Been Trained in Space Using an Orbiting Nvidia GPU". PCMAG. 2025-12-10. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "'One small step for LLMs': Why training the first AI model in space is a breakthrough". The Indian Express. 2025-12-13. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "StarCloud's Space AI Greets Earth with Witty Message". The Chosun Daily (in Korean). 2025-12-13. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Starcloud Launches AI Satellite with NVIDIA H100 to Cut Energy Use". International Business Times UK. 2025-10-17. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ "Starcloud to Launch First H100 GPU Into Space This November". The Tech Buzz. 15 October 2025. Retrieved 20 December 2025.
- ^ Craske, Ben (2025-10-24). "How Will Crusoe and Starcloud Build Data Centres in Space?". datacentremagazine.com. Retrieved 2025-12-20.
- ^ Collins, Georgia (2025-10-29). "Crusoe and Starcloud's Sun-Powered Data Centre in Space". sustainabilitymag.com. Retrieved 2025-12-20.