Sophia Space, a new startup building orbital compute and data centers, has raised $10 million in new seed funding. The new fund comes after the startup company announced an official partnership with Nvidia (NVDA).
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Trade NVDA with leverageNotably, the $10 million round includes backing from venture and private capital firms, Alpha Funds, KDDI Green Partners Fund, and Unlock Venture Partners, strengthening Sophia Space’s position as it advances high-efficiency data processing in space.
The capital will fund ground-based testing of its technology ahead of an in-space demonstration scheduled for late 2027 or early 2028. To host the prototype, Sophia Space plans to acquire a satellite bus from venture-backed spacecraft manufacturer Apex, allowing the startup to validate its system in the harsh conditions of orbit.
Sophia Space Plans Orbital Demo for Novel Computing Tech
At the center of Sophia Space’s approach are “TILES,” thin, modular computing units roughly one meter square and only a few centimeters thick. Each panel integrates solar cells on one side and processors on the other, creating a compact, self-powered server rack tailored for space.
Instead of relying on fans or bulky radiators, the system uses passive cooling through thermal conduction. This eliminates moving parts and addresses one of space engineering’s biggest hurdles: dissipating heat in a vacuum where there is no airflow. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also highlighted this during the company’s most recent earnings call.
Furthermore, Sophia Space CEO Rob DeMillo points to a major inefficiency in recent satellite operations. Spacecraft collect enormous volumes of sensor data but often discard much of it due to limited onboard computing power or bandwidth constraints when transmitting data back to Earth. Sophia Space’s design aims to solve that bottleneck by directing up to 92% of generated power toward computation, a significant improvement over conventional satellite architectures.
Sophia Space Advances Space-Native Computing
In the near term, Sophia Space says it will validate its thermal performance and energy efficiency on the ground before launching its orbital test mission. The demonstration will confirm whether the TILES can operate reliably under real-world conditions.
Looking further ahead, Sophia Space plans to scale its modular units into large orbital arrays, potentially spanning 50 by 50 meters, capable of delivering megawatts of computing power. Such infrastructure could support real-time AI edge processing for Earth observation and defense applications, and eventually form the backbone of space-based data centers in the 2030s.
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