Sophia Space Raises $10 Million to Test AI Cooling System in Orbit

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California-based orbital computing startup Sophia Space has raised $10 million in seed funding to develop and test a passive cooling system designed to run artificial intelligence workloads in orbit.

The round was led by Alpha Funds, KDDI Green Partners Fund and Unlock Venture Partners.

As next-generation satellites generate larger streams of imagery and sensor data, transmitting everything back to Earth can strain bandwidth and add latency. That has prompted interest in performing more computing onboard spacecraft.

A major hurdle is thermal control. In space, heat cannot dissipate through air, complicating efforts to operate high-performance chips. “It’s cold in space … [but] there’s no airflow, and so the only way to dissipate is through conduction,” Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said in a recent earnings call, highlighting the engineering constraints facing orbital data centers.

Sophia Space plans ground tests before flying a demonstration mission on a satellite bus from Apex Space, targeting late 2027 or early 2028.

Instead of traditional radiator-heavy designs, the company is developing flat, modular units called TILES, each about a meter wide and only a few centimeters thick. The structure draws on research from a Caltech-led initiative exploring space-based solar power.

Chief Executive Rob DeMillo said the configuration allows processors to transfer heat into a passive spreader, reducing reliance on mechanical cooling. The company ultimately envisions linking thousands of modules into a large array capable of delivering about one megawatt of computing capacity.

“The dirty little secret of the satellite industry is we’ve got all these amazing sensors up there that produce terabytes, or even petabytes, of data every few minutes, and they throw most of it out because they can’t do the computing on board and they can’t get round trip back and forth to the surface fast enough,” DeMillo told TechCrunch.

In the near term, Sophia aims to sell its hardware to satellite operators seeking stronger onboard analytics for applications including Earth imaging, defense systems and communications.

Founded in 2023, the company says its radiation-tolerant, solid-state modules are designed to integrate with third-party platforms.

“Sophia Space is pioneering scalable supercomputing in orbit; fueling the emerging space economy, strengthening national defense infrastructure, and helping to save lives on Earth by processing massive volumes of space-generated Earth observation data in real time,” Leon Alkalai, Founder and Executive Chairman of Sophia Space, said.

“It effectively reduces bandwidth demands and latency, enabling faster, real-time decision-making for time-critical missions, from defense and disaster response to maritime awareness and monitoring vital energy infrastructure.”

DeMillo said the fresh capital will help accelerate development. 

“Our TILE modules, enhanced with patented cooling technology, let us scale AI in ways that are simply unmatched. With this Seed round, we’re not just building compute modules, we’re building the infrastructure for the next era of space-based AI and data processing.”

While some proposals envision placing vast numbers of data centers in orbit, including an idea floated by SpaceX to deploy as many as a million units, those plans have drawn skepticism from firms such as AWS and OpenAI.

Other companies examining orbital computing include Axiom Space, NTT, Lonestar and Blue Origin, highlighting growing interest in whether large-scale space-based processing can become commercially viable.