Orbital's Ambitious Lift-Off
Former Spin executive and maker Euwyn Poon is taking his hardware know-how off the planet. Poon's startup, Orbital, has raised $5 million to begin building compact data centers designed to operate in space, with a long-term target of launching 10,000 such units.
The funding kickstarts an audacious rethink of global compute infrastructure. By moving compute into orbit, Orbital aims to reduce latency for satellite-native services, provide resilient off‑Earth backups, and enable new classes of edge and AI workloads that benefit from proximity to space sensors and communications relays.
Potential benefits include:
- Lower latency and streamlined data paths for satellite communications and space-based sensors.
- Greater resilience through distributed, off‑planet redundancy for critical data and services.
- New opportunities for AI and edge processing that need to live close to orbital data sources.
Poon brings a track record of large-scale hardware rollout—he helped build 250,000 scooters at Spin—which strengthens confidence that Orbital can tackle the logistics and production challenges of space hardware. While the plan is still early and will require further capital, partnerships and launches, this seed raise marks a clear vote of confidence in space-based infrastructure as the next frontier for compute.
Watch for upcoming milestones such as prototype demonstrations, launch partnerships, and additional funding rounds as indicators of progress. If successful, Orbital could expand where compute lives and unlock new capabilities for satellite operators, enterprise cloud providers, and AI services.