There aren’t enough rockets for a data center – Cowboy Space raised $275M to build one

The insatiable demand for AI compute has data businesses looking for stars. There’s a big problem: There aren’t enough rockets to put data into orbit around Earth, and they’re too expensive.

Many players are hoping that SpaceX’s Starship – which is expected to make its 12th test flight as soon as this weekend – will solve the problem. But once the vehicle is operational, it could be years before it’s commercially available, thanks to SpaceX’s satellite business. The the same is true Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which failed to deliver a satellite on its third launch in April.

That leaves data center plans looking towards the mid-2030s, such as Google’s Suncatcher, or plans to start working on space filters, such as Starcloud.

In theory, there is a third option: “We are stopping our rocket program,” Baiju Bhatt, CEO and founder of Cowboy Space Corporation, told TechCrunch. They expect the first launch in late 2028.

Today, the company announced the closing of a $275 million Series B round at a capital cost of $2 billion, led by back-end Index Ventures, as an investment in the project. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Construct Capital, IVP, and SAIC also participated. The company has already raised $80 million from investors, including Index, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and New Enterprise Associates.

Bhatt, the co-founder of the online platform Robinhood, launched this in 2024 as Aetherflux, with the idea of ​​collecting large amounts of solar energy in space and beaming it down to Earth. The idea of ​​a data center led the company to use its own electricity while traveling. The the real thing of that effort, in turn, led him to the rocket development program, and the new name of the company.

Bhatt said he talked to a number of startups to try to find a way his company could build satellites on its own, but he didn’t find enough opportunities to scale the orbital data center business, or to do so in a way that the economics of space could compete with other Earth systems.

“There are a lot of new rockets coming online, but we’re looking at three, four years, it’s still very rare, and I think you’re going to see a lot of first-party rocket providers working on their payload,” Bhatt said.

Of course, bringing a rocket indoors makes sense, and is nuts. Only a few companies in the West, notably SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and Arianespace, are launching commercial rockets on a regular basis. Two others, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, have struggled to pull their vehicles out of development hell for years. Several startups, including Stoke Space, Firefly Aerospace, and Relativity Space, have operated for years and are still waiting to deliver operational systems.

This change of company will also bring Cowboy Space Corporation into direct competition with SpaceX and Blue Origin, the biggest and most profitable players in the market.

“The rewards here, and the size of this market, are so big that there is an opportunity for many players to win,” Bhatt said. “I see the importance of AI increasing, and I see the options in the world increasing.”

One advantage, Bhatt argues, is the company’s focus on this one market (data centers), and its unique design. Orbital rockets usually have a booster stage that flies the vehicle to the edge of space, and a second stage that carries the payload and delivers it to orbit. Cowboy Space plans to build its data center in the second stage of its rocket. It’s a bit of a payback: The first US satellite, Explorer 1, was built as the last part of a rocket, complete with radio equipment and several scientific instruments.

Building a purpose-built rocket to launch its data satellites should simplify the design. The company expects each satellite to weigh 20,000 to 25,000 kilograms and generate 1 MW of power for just under 800 GPUs. This means that its rocket would be slightly more powerful than SpaceX’s workhorse, the Falcon 9, although it would still be smaller than Starship, which is still in development. After that, Bhatt says, he hopes the incentive will be used again.

Cowboy Space has hired space experts, including former Blue Origin propulsion engineer Warren Lamont and former SpaceX founding director Tyler Grinnell. The company also plans to build its own rocket engine, the most difficult and expensive part of any launch vehicle. Cowboy Space is still working on major development needs, such as a facility to test, manufacture, and launch its rockets.

The new vision comes with a new startup name, to emphasize its mission to “empower humanity from a higher level,” though Bhatt admits it “gives me a reason to wear a cowboy hat and grow a sick mustache.”