Here's one metric for how thoroughly SpaceX has reshaped the venture industry's view on capital-intensive space projects: a talented founder with zero space experience can now raise $5 million to build a space data center company.

Orbital, which emerged in May from a16z's startup accelerator Speedrun, is the latest firm promising to do AI inference in orbit - as soon as Starship starts flying regularly. The seed round was led by a16z's Speedrun, with additional backing from Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent, Rubik, Zero Knowledge Ventures, LYVC, Feld Ventures, New Legacy, FNDR, UpHonest, and Asterisk.

Founder and CEO Euwyn Poon previously founded e-scooter company Spin in 2017, selling it to Ford a year later. When he was ready for a new venture, a16z's Speedrun was eager to get on board, according to partner Andrew Chen, who told TechCrunch that Poon cycled through several ideas before landing on space data centers.

You've heard the pitch before: insatiable demand for AI compute, slow terrestrial deployment, limitless sunshine in space, and limited environmental reviews. The main obstacle remains the brutal economics of launching stuff into orbit, which currently makes the business case impossible to close.

Orbital, like many competitors, is betting on SpaceX figuring out its Starship rocket and offering it to commercial customers. "We will get to full scale when Starship comes online," Poon explained. The price of the Falcon 9, the current state of the art, "makes this not economically feasible."

For now, Poon and his roughly dozen-person team in Los Angeles - with experience at Amazon LEO, SpaceX, and Northrop Grumman - are working toward a demo flight that will see the company fly an Nvidia Blackwell chip on a partner's satellite to test Orbital's radiation shielding and thermal management technology. In 2028, the company hopes to launch its first data-processing spacecraft with Nvidia's Space-1 Vera Rubin-class GPUs.

At that point, Orbital wants to start doing piece-wise inference work, generating revenue with each satellite launched. That's a similar path to rival Starcloud, which already has a GPU in orbit and plans to launch several more to generate income until Starship enables deployment of their full constellation.

Orbital's goal is to deploy 10,000 satellites providing a distributed gigawatt of computing power, each satellite delivering 100 kW. For comparison, Elon Musk said SpaceX expects its AI satellites to produce up to 150 kW, and Starcloud expects to field larger 200 kW-rated spacecraft.

Some companies are too impatient to wait for Starship. Cowboy Space Company, another a16z-backed space data center startup, recently decided to start building its own rockets. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin also announced plans to launch data centers into space using its New Glenn launch vehicle.

Poon is confident the breadth of AI demand will allow many companies to succeed. "There's so many lanes for companies in our space to pursue," he told TechCrunch, before rattling off an array of choices including different AI workloads, designs, and concepts of what a space data center looks like.

Chen said Poon's experience scaling a company that deployed 250,000 scooters across 100 cities shows he can manage the tricky task of building an aerospace company. Over the long term, this project might take a decade and $5 billion or more, but Chen said venture firms are now comfortable with such timelines.

"This kind of thing would have sounded crazy 10 years ago when we were all building mobile apps," Chen said. "Starting it in 2026 just lets you tap into all the energy and excitement that's happening in the capital markets."

Poon found his way into the space data center business by a circuitous route. After leaving Ford, he bought an Nvidia A100 on a lark, co-locating it in a Santa Clara data center and serving open-weight models. That firsthand experience convinced him of the value in delivering compute in the AI era.

Now he's just got to put a couple thousand GPUs in space.