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Building the First Data Centers in Space

Building the First Data Centers in Space

Y Combinator Startup Podcast
Aug 5, 2026 36 min
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About this episode

<p>Philip Johnston is the co-founder and CEO of Starcloud, the company building data centers in space. </p><p><br></p><p>In November 2025, Starcloud launched an Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit and trained the first large language model in space. They&#39;ve since raised $200 million, hit a billion-dollar valuation just 17 months after YC demo day, and filed with the FCC to deploy 88,000 more satellites. </p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Philip walks us through their wild origin story, the engineering challenges behind the Starcloud-1, why they booked a SpaceX launch before they even knew what they were building, and how data centers in space make sense both economically and politically.</p>

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