On-orbit computing startup Sophia Space raises $3.5m and promises orbital data centres.
Seattle-based Sophia Space, an orbital computing venture, has raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding led by Unlock Ventures with the participation of angel investors, to develop Edge compute solutions for orbit and what they call space-based data centers.
“We are at the dawn of a new era where our demand for AI technology should not come at the expense of our planetary health due to energy constraints,” Leon Alkalai, company Co-Founder and Chairman, said in a statement.
Alkalai is an ex-NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory fellow, and is joined by Intel and Microsoft veteran Brian Monnin as Chief Growth Officer. Monnin also founded Seattle tech startups Play Impossible and Quivr.
The company’s signature technology is the TILE platform, a computing unit optimised for the use of AI technologies, commercial space stations, and defense systems. TILEs feature solid-state, self-sustaining compute modules that offer radiation-resistant, vendor-agnostic performance.
“Our modular Sophia TILEs unlock a future of scalable, energy-efficient, orbital compute infrastructure, from satellites and space stations to full-scale orbital data centers that will augment terrestrial data centers in the future. Doing so will help civil, defense, and commercial customers grow more rapidly without drawing from local energy grids or water supplies as is the case now,” Alkalai added.
Sophia claims TILE Edge servers aren’t adapted from terrestrial solutions, instead built deliberately for space, configured with either Qualcomm SnapDragon 865 and Cloud 100, or Nvidia Jetson and Blackwell, each with its own dedicated solar panel.
