Euwyn Poon, who previously built 250,000 scooters at Spin, has secured $5 million to launch Orbital, a company planning to deploy 10,000 data centers in space.
Poon's shift from micro-mobility to orbital infrastructure marks an expansion into satellite-based computing. The funding will support development of space data centers designed to reduce latency and improve global data processing capabilities.
Orbital's model leverages satellite networks to distribute computing resources beyond Earth-based infrastructure. The company plans to deploy thousands of data centers across orbital altitudes, offering alternative routes for data transmission and edge computing applications.
Poon's background scaling physical hardware at Spin positions him to manage the manufacturing and deployment challenges of space infrastructure. His experience shipping quarter-million units demonstrates operational capacity required for orbital deployment at scale.
The funding round reflects growing investor interest in space-based computing as terrestrial data centers face capacity constraints and latency limitations for certain applications.
Peter Beck's Rocket Lab is building a satellite internet business to compete with SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon's Project Kuiper. The New Zealand billionaire is positioning his company as a third major player in the emerging space internet market.
AST SpaceMobile, a SpaceX competitor in satellite communications, is benefiting from a passionate online community dubbed the 'SpaceMob' that is actively driving up the company's stock price.
Chinese AI startup Psibot has reached a $1.48 billion valuation after securing close to $100 million in new funding. The milestone reflects growing investor appetite for artificial intelligence startups in China.
Khosla Ventures is in talks to raise up to $5.5 billion for its latest investment funds, marking the venture firm's largest fundraising effort in its 20-year history.