Sophia Space raises $3.5 million for orbiting data centers

ST. LOUIS – Sophia Space raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding to develop orbiting compute and data centers with key geospatial intelligence applications.

The Southern California startup’s modular data centers will be particularly useful for intelligence gathering, disaster monitoring and disaster management, Leon Alkalai, Sophia founder and retired NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory technical fellow, told SpaceNews by email. “All are based on Earth-observation data” and “low-latency information will save lives,” he added.

TILE, a platform designed for low-latency, energy-efficient AI processing, is the foundation for Sophia’s scalable infrastructure. The TILE architecture “features solid-state, self-sustaining compute modules with space cooling and integrated solar power,” according to Sophia’s May 19 news release.

“Our customers — from satellite operators to commercial space stations — simply want their data processed and delivered more rapidly,” Sophia CEO Rob DeMillo said in a statement. “Sophia delivers orbital edge computing — processing workloads directly in space, near the source of data, and dramatically reducing the time to insight on Earth.”

Under a memorandum of understanding, Axiom Space and Sophia are working together to demonstrate the utility of orbital data centers for Golden Dome, a comprehensive U.S. missile shield proposed by the Trump White House.

Jason Aspiotis, Axiom Space global director for in-space data and security, said in a statement that Sophia’s Tile-based approach “lays the foundations” for orbital data centers that could scale to offer megawatts of cumulative processing power via a distributed network of orbital nodes.

Unlock Venture Partners led the Sophia Space investment round. Angel investors and industry leaders participated.