The apparently insatiable demand for AI compute has data center entreprenuers looking to the stars. There’s a key problem: There aren’t enough rockets to put data centers in orbit around the Earth, and they’re too expensive.
Most of the players are hoping that SpaceX’s Starship — expected to make its twelfth test flight as soon as this weekend— will solve the problem. But once the vehicle is operational it may be years before it is commercially available, given SpaceX’s internal satellite business. The same is true for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which failed to deliver a satellite during its third launch in April.
That leaves space data center schemes either targeting the mid 2030s, like Google Suncatcher, or preparing to start off doing edge processing tasks for space sensors, like Starcloud.
In theory, there’s a third way: “We’re standing up our own rocket program,” Baiju Bhatt, the CEO and founder of Cowboy Space Corporation, told TechCrunch. He expects the first launch before the end of 2028.
Today, the company announced the closure of a $275 million Series B round at a post-money valuation of $2 billion, led by Index Ventures, as a downpayment on that work. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Construct Capital, IVP, and SAIC also participated.
Bhatt, a co-founder of online stock platform Robinhood, launched this startup in 2024 as Aetherflux, with plans to collect abundant solar energy in space and beam it down to Earth. The idea of space data centers led the company to pivot towards using its electricity while in orbit. The practical realities of that effort, in turn, led him to a rocket development program, and the company’s new name.
Bhatt said he spoke to multiple launch providers to try and find a path where his company would only build satellites, but he couldn’t find enough launch capacity to truly scale an orbital data center business, or do so in a way where the unit economics could compete with terrestria …