🚀 AI moves off-planet: Sophia Space secures $3.5M to launch orbital datacenters

The US-based startup is building modular, radiation-hardened AI servers designed to operate directly in space.

Powered by solar energy and passively cooled, these TILE units can run on Snapdragon or NVIDIA Jetson, forming orbital edge clusters.

🔹 Founded by ex-NASA JPL, Intel, and Microsoft engineers

🔹 Unlock Ventures led the round, with backing from private investors

🔹 Use cases: real-time satellite data processing, defense tech, and commercial AI models offloaded from Earth

Why it matters:

The volume of space-generated data is skyrocketing — but downlink bandwidth remains limited.

Processing it in orbit could dramatically cut latency, costs, and load — especially for defense and aerospace players.

🛰️ Orbital edge computing may be the next frontier in scalable AI infrastructure.

Is orbital edge computing the future of AI infrastructure?