REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 2, 2026--
Please replace the release dated March 30, 2026 with the following corrected version due to multiple revisions. Replace the photo with the accompanying corrected photo.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260330024111/en/
The updated release reads:
STARCLOUD RAISES $170M SERIES A AT $1.1BN VALUATION LED BY BENCHMARK AND EQT VENTURES
Becomes Y Combinator's fastest ever unicorn, just 17 months after completing the seed accelerator. The space infrastructure startup is building orbital data centers to solve the terrestrial AI energy bottleneck.
Starcloud, the company building data centers in space, today announced it has raised a $170 million Series A, at a $1.1 billion valuation. Achieving unicorn status just 17 months after its Y Combinator demo day, Starcloud is now the fastest unicorn in Y Combinator history. The round is also more than double the size of the next largest YC Series A, and brings the company’s total capital raised to $200 million.
As artificial intelligence drives unprecedented demand for computing power, terrestrial infrastructure is struggling to keep pace. Permitting and building new data centers and energy projects on Earth can take up to five years. Starcloud is bypassing these terrestrial constraints by building data centers in low Earth orbit where they have access to virtually unlimited, low-cost solar energy.
"The AI revolution is colliding with the physical limits of our terrestrial energy grid. We are quickly running out of places to build new energy projects for data centers on Earth. By moving AI compute to space, we unlock access to unlimited solar power and completely remove the energy bottleneck. This funding allows us to rapidly scale our orbital infrastructure and meet the massive commercial demand for sustainable AI compute."
-Philip Johnston, Co-Founder and CEO of Starcloud
Starcloud has demonstrated a pace of execution previously unseen in the aerospace or tech industries. With just $3 million in pre-seed funding, the company designed, built, and launched its first satellite, Starcloud-1, in a record 21 months. Launched in November 2025, the mission achieved several historic industry firsts:
As part of the financing, Benchmark General Partner and six-time Midas lister, Chetan Puttagunta, will join the board of Starcloud.
“We believe that we are in the early innings of a decades-long buildout of AI infrastructure,” said Puttagunta. “Starcloud is pioneering a solution to the challenges of scaling AI infrastructure on Earth with orbital data centers. Their extraordinary engineering team has achieved significant technical breakthroughs in power and cooling, as well as innovative advancements in manufacturing processes. Most notably, the great team at Starcloud has reached these milestones while remaining exceptionally capital efficient. We believe their technical rigor and remarkable ambitions will enable them to achieve extraordinary scale.”
The new capital will accelerate the design and build of the company's next-generation Starcloud-3 satellites, the establishment of a dedicated manufacturing facility, critical headcount expansion, and the procurement of future launch contracts.
Later this year, the company will launch Starcloud-2. This satellite will feature the largest commercial deployable radiator ever sent to space and generate 100x the power generation of Starcloud-1. Starcloud-2 will be the company's first satellite to run commercial edge and cloud workloads for customers, including early customer Crusoe, alongside partnerships with AWS, Google Cloud, and NVIDIA.
The round was split into two tranches, with an initial round led by Benchmark with participation from EQT, and an extension round co-led by both investors. EQT is the world's second-largest private equity fund, with over $100bn in assets under management, and the owner of more than 70 data centers. Benchmark is the world's most successful long-running venture capital fund by returns.
The heavily oversubscribed round also saw participation from major global funds and strategic partners, including NFX, Nebular, Y Combinator, Adjacent, 776 Ventures, FUSE, Manhattan West, and Monolith Power Systems. Prominent angel investors joining the round include Gen. Stephen Wilson, former Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, and former Starbucks CEO and Goldman Sachs board member Kevin Johnson.
For more information, visit www.starcloud.com.
About Starcloud: Starcloud is building data centers in space to solve the AI energy bottleneck. Starcloud launched its first satellite, Starcloud-1, in November 2025. It featured the first NVIDIA H100 on board, which is approximately 100x more powerful GPU compute than has been on orbit before and was the first to train an AI model in space. Founded in 2024, Starcloud is headquartered at 2517 152nd Ave NE, Redmond, WA 98052.
Starcloud Co-founders: Ezra Feilden, Philip Johnston, Adi Oltean
