Cowboy Space Corporation, the orbital infrastructure company founded by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, has raised $275 million in Series B financing at a $2 billion valuation. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from new investors IVP, Blossom Capital and SAIC, alongside existing backers Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Construct Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Interlagos and Bhatt himself. The company, which operated under the name Aetherflux since its founding in 2024, also unveiled a new name and brand alongside the funding announcement.
Cowboy Space Corporation is developing vertically integrated infrastructure to run AI compute in orbit, positioning itself as an answer to growing strain on terrestrial data center capacity. The company is building a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that harness solar energy, a purpose-built launch vehicle to deliver them, and compute payloads engineered specifically for the space environment. Critically, the rocket’s upper stage and data center payload are designed as a single unified vehicle rather than separate components, eliminating redundant mass and maximizing power and compute delivered to orbit. Once in orbit, each upper stage functions as a one-megawatt data center.
The company is also collaborating with NVIDIA to deploy NVIDIA Space-1 Vera Rubin Modules in the Low Earth Orbit environment, bringing state-of-the-art AI infrastructure to space. Cowboy’s team includes engineers from SpaceX, Astranis, NASA, Kuiper and NVIDIA. The company plans to launch its first satellite later this year to demonstrate space-to-Earth power beaming.
Headquartered in San Carlos, California, Cowboy Space Corporation is targeting a market increasingly defined by AI compute demand that ground-based infrastructure may struggle to meet at scale.
KEY QUOTES:
“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. The rocket and the data center are a single design from day one. It’s a first-principles departure from the traditional constellation model.”
Baiju Bhatt, Founder and CEO, Cowboy Space Corporation
“Cowboy is building at exactly the right moment, as demand for AI compute and energy begins to outstrip what terrestrial infrastructure can support. Baiju has a proven track record of reimagining massive markets from first principles, and his lifelong passion for physics makes space the ultimate market opportunity for that ambition. We’re excited to back the team as they execute on this vision.”
Jan Hammer, Partner, Index Ventures
