Sophia Space raises $10M to accelerate creation of orbital computing systems

Sophia Space says it has closed a $10 million seed financing round to accelerate the development of orbital computing systems that could serve as the foundation for space-based data processing.

The startup’s tabletop-sized satellite modules, known as tiles, take advantage of a proprietary system that combines solar power generation and radiative cooling. Multiple tiles can be connected into racks to provide scalable computing power in low Earth orbit. The infrastructure concept is called Thermal-Integrated LEO Edge, or TILE.

“With this seed round, we’re not just building compute modules,” Sophia Space CEO Rob DeMillo said today in a news release. “We’re building the infrastructure for the next era of space-based AI and data processing.”

The investment round was led by Alpha Funds, KDDI Green Partners Fund and Unlock Venture Partners — and builds upon $3.5 million in pre-seed investment. The newly raised cash will support the continued hiring of engineering talent, the further maturation of Sophia’s TILE platform and the formation of strategic partnerships in the orbital computing ecosystem.

Sophia Space is based in Pasadena, Calif., and was founded in 2023 by Leon Alkalai, a former fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who now serves as the company’s chief technology officer and executive board chairman. The venture has a Pacific Northwest connection in chief growth officer Brian Monnin, who previously worked at Intel and Microsoft before founding Seattle startups Play Impossible and Quivr.

In-space computing is increasingly gaining attention because of the potential for launching orbital data centers for artificial intelligence applications.

Orbital data centers could address some of the major challenges surrounding terrestrial data centers, such as the need for land and electrical power. But finding a way to cool data center satellites amid the vacuum of space poses its own technical challenge. Sophia’s founders say the company’s TILE architecture, combined with the placement of satellites in orbits around Earth’s day-night terminator, can address the cooling challenge.

DeMillo said the operating system for Sophia’s tiles — known as the Sophia Orbital Operating System, or SOOS — is another ingredient in the company’s secret sauce.

“SOOS is an autonomous operating system that takes the place of an IT person,” he told GeekWire. “As the tiles are connected together, the operating system is aware of all the other tiles in the system and does things like process heat management across the tiles. … It’ll route around dead tiles. It’ll do security patches. It’ll do operating system upgrades.”

Sophia Space is planning to conduct in-space demonstrations of its software with an existing communications network later this year.

DeMillo said the company intends to start with space-based edge computing — for example, on-the-spot processing of imaging data collected by Earth observation satellites. “Until we get to the level where we’re going to be putting up our own orbital data centers, selling these as edge computers allows income to flow into the company and gets our name out there, and allows us to refine things going forward,” he said.

Alkalai said that’s an often-overlooked part of Sophia’s business plan. “We believe that we’re not in competition with terrestrial data centers — not certainly in the near term, for the next 10 or 20 years,” he told GeekWire. “We’re going where the data is, and that’s where we’re doing the edge computing.”

The system is designed so that a rack of Sophia’s tiles can either be attached to a satellite using an armature, or be sold as a standalone spacecraft.

“We don’t pay for launch costs,” DeMillo said. “We’re handling support and everything else, but it is the client who pays for the launch cost to get everything in orbit. That gives us the ability to collect revenue with very little spent on getting everything to orbit, and allows us to get to the orbital data center phase for less capital than our competitors.”

The company is already collaborating with Axiom Space and Armada on in-space edge computing initiatives, and DeMillo said more partnerships could be announced in the weeks ahead. Sophia Space is planning to deliver its first TILE modules to customers in 2028, he said.

Sophia Space isn’t the only venture working on space-based computing systems: Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud is focusing more directly on orbital data centers, while Florida-based Lonestar Data Holdings is looking into sending data center spacecraft to the moon and other off-Earth destinations.

This report has been updated with additional comments from DeMillo and Alkalai.