Aetherflux, the company started by former Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, has rebranded as Cowboy Space and expanded its focus to orbital data centers and associated launch infrastructure.
Cowboy Space announced a $275 million Series B round on Monday, which values the company at $2 billion. Index Ventures led the round, which also included participation from new investors IVP, Blossom Capital, and SAIC. Existing investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Construct Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Interlagos and Baiju Bhatt participated.
Aetherflux, which raised a $50 million Series A round a year ago, was founded to focus on space-based power. Now as Cowboy Space, the company says it is developing a constellation called “Stampede,” satellites in Low-Earth Orbit to harness solar power and run on-orbit data centers.
Cowboy Space also unveiled plans for a launch vehicle where the upper stage is the data center payload, in one unified vehicle. The company said each upper stage “becomes a 1-megawatt data center” in orbit.
“Our approach starts from a blank sheet, where the unique requirements of data centers in orbit drive the form and function of the overall system,” said Baiju Bhatt, founder and CEO of Cowboy Space Corporation. “The rocket and the data center are a single design from day one. It’s a first-principles departure from the traditional constellation model.”
The announcement was light on specifics, but Cowboy Space plans to launch its first satellite later this year, which will aim to demonstrate beaming power from space to Earth. It plans to use Nvidia Space-1 Vera Rubin Modules onboard its satellites, and was mentioned as collaborating with the chip company in a recent announcement.
