Cowboy Space raises $275M to build orbital data centers and rockets amid launch capacity shortage

There aren't enough rockets for space data centers. Cowboy Space raised $275 million to build them.

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 terrestrial alternatives. "There's a lot of new rockets that are coming online, but as we look three, four years out, it's still very, very scarce, and I think that you're going to see a lot of the first party rocket providers actually specialize into their own payloads," Bhatt said. Of course, while bringing the rocket in-house is logical, it's also nuts. Only a handful of private companies in the West, mainly SpaceX, Rocket Lab and Arianespace, are consistently launching commercial rockets. Two others, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, have been struggling to drag their vehicles out of development hell for years. A number of startups, including Stoke Space, Firefly Aerospace, and Relativity Space, have worked for years and are still waiting to deliver operational systems. This evolution of the company will also bring Cowboy Space Corporation into direct competition with SpaceX and Blue Origin, the most advanced and well-funded players in the market. "The prize here, and the size of this market, is big enough that there's room for many players to succeed," Bhatt said "I see the demand for AI getting more and more acute, and I see the options on Earth getting more and more limited." One advantage, Bhatt argues, is the company's focus on this single market (data centers), and its unique design. Orbital rockets typically have a booster stage that flies the vehicle to the edge of space, and a second stage that carries the payload and delivers it to orbit. Cowboy Space plans to build its data centers directly into the second stage of its rocket. It's actually a bit of a throw-back: The first US satellite, Explorer 1, was built as the final stage of a rocket, filled with radio equipment and a few scientific instruments. Making the rocket purpose-built only to launch its data-center satellites should simplify the design process. The company expects each satellite to have a mass of 20,000 to 25,000 kilograms and to generate 1 MW of power for just under 800 onboard GPUs. That means its rocket would be slightly more powerful than the SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9, though still smaller than its under-development Starship. Eventually, Bhatt says, he expects the booster to be reusable. Cowboy Space has hired veterans of the space industry, including former Blue Origin propulsion engineer Warren Lamont and former SpaceX launch director Tyler Grinne. The company also plans to build its own rocket engine, the most complex and expensive part of any launch vehicle. Cowboy Space is still working through key development needs, like facilities to test, manufacture and launch its rockets. The new vision comes with a new name for the startup, to emphasize its mission to "power humanity from the high frontier," although Bhatt admits "it gives me a reason to wear a cowboy hat and also grow this sick mustache."

Cowboy Space raises $275M to build orbital AI data centers - SiliconANGLE

Space technology startup Cowboy Space Corp. today disclosed that it has raised $275 million in funding at a $2 billion valuation. Index Ventures led the Series B round. It was joined by NEA, IVP and several other institutional investors along with Cowboy Space founding Chief Executive Baiju Bhatt, who previously co-founded Robinhood Markets Inc. The raise brings the company's total outside funding to $355 million. Cowboy Space is one of several startups working to deploy artificial intelligence data centers in space. The primary motivation behind doing so is the abundance of solar power available in orbit. A solar panel can generate significantly more electricity in space than on the ground because its efficiency is not diminished by atmospheric light absorption. Furthermore, orbital solar panels can be deployed at a perpendicular angle to the sun to maximize power generation. On the ground, solar farms are only perpendicular to the sun for a limited amount of time. Cowboy Space launched last year under the name Aetherflux. Its original plan was to deploy orbital solar panels and beam down the power they generate in the form of infrared light. Ahead of its funding round, the company pivoted to using those solar panels to power data centers in low-Earth orbit. According to TechCrunch, each of the company's data center modules will provide one megawatt of computing power. That power is set to be provided by about 800 onboard graphics processing units. Those chips, the data center module's auxiliary computing equipment and its other components together weigh 20 to 25 tons. The system is based on the Space-1 Vera Rubin Module that Nvidia Corp. debuted earlier this year. It's a modified version of the company's Vera Rubin accelerator, which combines an 88-core central processing unit with two Rubin graphics cards. A single Rubin chip can provide 50 petaflops of performance when processing NVFP4 data. Cowboy Space plans to make not only data center modules but also the rockets that it will take them to orbit. A space launch vehicle comprises two segments: a first stage responsible for lifting it out of the atmosphere and a second stage that contains cargo. Usually, the second stage is a single-use module that floats off after releasing its cargo. Cowboy Space plans to take a different approach. The company intends to use its rocket's second stage as a data center container, which will remove the need to discard it. Cowboy Space expects that arrangement to lower hardware costs. The one megawatt capacity of the company's data center module represents a fraction of the processing power offered by terrestrial AI environments. As a result, it may have to link together multiple data center modules into a cluster. Cowboy Space didn't specify how it plans to go about the task. Rival space startup Starcloud Inc. plans to attach multiple data center modules to a single support structure with a 6.1-square-mile solar array. In theory, such a support structure can be equipped with a network that facilitates packet movement. The alternative is to have the data center center modules exchange data wirelessly using laser transmitters. Cowboy Space plans to launch its first satellite next year. In the longer term, it hopes to lower its launch costs by building a reusable rocket. The company may face significant competition from SpaceX Corp.'s upcoming Starlink rocket. The launch vehicle features a reusable second phase with a maximum capacity of 150 tons, or 7.5 times the weight of Cowboy Space's data center module. SpaceX has indicated that it also plans to deploy AI infrastructure in orbit.