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Jun 9, 2026 8:10 AM

Orbital Raises Oversubscribed $5M Pre-Seed Round to Build AI Data Centers in Space

LOS ANGELES, June 09, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orbital, a space infrastructure company building AI data centers in Low Earth Orbit, today announced a $5 million pre-seed round to accelerate development of its orbital compute satellites, designed to harness solar energy to power intelligence.

The round was led by a16z speedrun and includes participation from Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent, Rubik, Zero Knowledge Ventures, LYVC, Feld Ventures, New Legacy, FNDR, UpHonest and Asterisk. The financing funds Orbital's first in-orbit technology demonstration, Pathfinder, and the initial development of Orbital-1, the first purpose-built satellite for AI compute. The round precedes a larger financing round as Orbital moves from validation to scaled manufacturing and constellation deployment, and builds Factory-1, its manufacturing facility in Los Angeles.

Orbital's efforts target a hard constraint now facing the AI industry. The International Energy Agency projects that global data center electricity ...