Star Cloud raises $250M Series A extension with Nvidia investing as it books launches and scales manufacturing

Speaker 1: We're going to space next.

Speaker 7: That's right.

Speaker 1: We got Philip Johnson. We got a spaceman.

Speaker 4: Cloud. Spaceman.

Speaker 1: How you doing? Welcome back to the show. Good to see you.

Speaker 7: Thanks so

Speaker 8: much for

Speaker 3: having me. Third time.

Speaker 4: Third time. Peed.

Speaker 1: I mean, it's a fascinating business. Attracts a ton of attention. Also, attracting a bunch of capital. What's the latest news for you?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So we just raised a series a extension, $250,000,000 at a $2,300,000,000. I ain't so bad. With NVIDIA investing, 25,000,000, and Cisco coming in and a bunch of other folks.

Speaker 1: Fantastic. What is the use of funds right now? I imagine that there's still a lot of r and d to do. I'm obviously very optimistic but you know, I when I when I talk when we talk about space data centers generally, we're usually in 2030, maybe 2028. So is there a use for capital right now? Or is this sort of more of an opportunistic raise, build a fortress balance sheet and then be able to hire and really build all the key precursor pieces to the actual ongoing business?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So I think there's a few reasons to to do the raise now. One is to secure launch. So booking launch for 2028, 2029, and that's obviously quite expensive. Another is when we work with I mean, we're doing some pilots with, you know, some of the large data center companies. We'll announce that soon. But they want to see a few $100,000,000 on the balance sheet before they'll, you know Sure. Commit their resources to the project. So that's another one. And then the last one is actually moving into much larger manufacturing facilities and starting to ramp up the team, things like that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. That makes sense. What is the state of the the experiments? I mean, I know that you I believe you put a GPU in space, there's other sort of test runs that you're doing. Walk me through the thesis there, what you hope to get out of those tests, what you expect to learn. And then also, I imagine that it's also just sort of marketing for the company, like awareness during a time when you're not putting up tons and tons of compute just yet.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I mentioned we launched the Star Cloud One satellite in November last year. So that had the first NVIDIA h 100 on board. It's still going strong. We're doing a whole bunch of tests on that. Really? We managed to yeah. We're we're we're doing the more the more useful workloads we're doing now are high card inference on other satellite imagery, particularly SAR data for various military and government applications.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 3: But, yeah, we've got three launches booked for next year. So we'll have two going up in q one next year, one towards the end of next year. And we're actually just booking on every, like, every launch provider possible now. So, yeah, we should have some well, I'm not sure if we've we've announced that yet, we'll announce a few other launches that we've booked soon.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Is that, you know, from a, you know, I guess forward looking standpoint, is that going to be important to be diversified from a launch partner standpoint? Because I can imagine when you need to raise the billion dollars, people are gonna be sitting there being like, hey, like, you're dependent on SpaceX and they're also in this business and maybe that's a concern over time. I'm sure right now, Elon is just happy for there to be more compute in space and have other parties, you know, proving out, this thesis. But Yeah. Is that is that important?

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So to start on the second point, mean, now, yeah, we do have a great relationship with SpaceX. We've signed a contract for the next 25 of our satellites to have their laser terminals on. So we'll also be using them for connectivity and we've got a whole bunch of launches booked. But yeah, I mean, I think it's good for the industry in general for for there to be lots of optionality in the launch market. And so, yeah, we're we're keen to encourage, you know, to be a a diverse launch ecosystem.

Speaker 4: Who what what it actually take to lock in launch in 2828 and '29? Are you having to put up a nonrefundable deposit? What what percentage of the of the total cost are you having to actually put up?

Speaker 3: Yeah. For most launch providers, it's sort of 10 to 20% down payment. Refundable if the launch doesn't happen. Mhmm. Although, with the more experimental rockets, if the launch doesn't happen, they probably have larger balance sheet problems than we're us. So it's a bit of a bit of a gamble on some of them. I mean, it's the kind of it's the kind of thing we're we're keen to spur on. So we're happy to to put those deposits up.

Speaker 1: Very cool. Well, congratulations on the new funding.

Speaker 4: Great progress.

Speaker 1: The progress. And we'll talk to you Have a good one. Cheers. Let me tell you about Figma. Agents meet the canvas.