Starcloud raises $250 million for orbital data centers as launch options dry up

“The reason they’ve chosen to do this investment now is because of all of this data that we got from Starcloud One,” he told TechCrunch. “They, more than any other VC, did way more technical duty on this than anybody else.”

The space-ready chip hasn’t even been built yet, but Starcloud hopes to fly it into orbit sometime in late 2028. Johnston says his engineers are tracking a few key design choices: the relationship between the running temperature of the chip and the size of the radiators that dispel that heat, the placement of radiation shielding, and the ruggedizing required for the chips to survive the violence of a rocket launch.

The company, currently 25 employees strong and growing, is developing production lines at a 100,000 square foot facility in Woodinville, Washington, near where SpaceX and Amazon build satellites for their communications networks.