Cowboy Space Corporation, formerly known as Aetherflux, announced a $275 million Series B funding round at a $2 billion valuation. The company is building orbital AI data centers powered by solar energy, a direct response to rising demand for AI compute capacity that terrestrial infrastructure can no longer support.
The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from IVP, Blossom Capital, SAIC, and existing backers including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and NEA. The company was founded in 2024 by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt.
Cowboy Space is developing a vertically integrated system: Low Earth Orbit satellites powered by solar energy, a custom launch vehicle, and compute payloads built for space. Each rocket’s upper stage remains in orbit and becomes a 1-megawatt data center, eliminating the traditional separation between payload and launch vehicle.
The company is working with NVIDIA to deploy advanced AI hardware-specifically, NVIDIA Space 1 Vera Rubin Modules-in Low Earth Orbit. The goal is to reduce redundant mass and deliver more power and compute resources to orbit.
Bhatt stressed that the system is designed from the ground up for space, not adapted from terrestrial models. He called the integrated rocket-and-data-center approach a first-principles departure from traditional satellite constellations.
Cowboy plans to launch its first satellite later this year to demonstrate space-to-Earth power beaming. The team includes engineers from SpaceX, NASA, and NVIDIA.
The race to move AI infrastructure beyond Earth is intensifying. SpaceX and Blue Origin are also reportedly exploring orbital data centers.