Lumen Orbit is building a network of megawatt-scale data centers in space, scaleable to gigawatt capacity, to be able to train large models like GPT6. Falling launch costs give us access to abundant energy, passive cooling, and the ability to rapidly scale in space.

In Partnership with NVIDIA's Inception Program, we are launching our demonstrator satellite in May 2025, which will have 100x more powerful GPUs than have ever been operated in space. 
Data centers in space
Title: Lumen Orbit: Data centers in space | Y Combinator

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### Data centers in space

Lumen Orbit is building a network of megawatt-scale data centers in space, scaleable to gigawatt capacity, to be able to train large models like GPT6. Falling launch costs give us access to abundant energy, passive cooling, and the ability to rapidly scale in space. In Partnership with NVIDIA's Inception Program, we are launching our demonstrator satellite in May 2025, which will have 100x more powerful GPUs than have ever been operated in space.

### Latest News



Lumen Orbit

Founded:2024

Team Size:3

Location:Redmond, WA

### Active Founders

### Philip Johnston, Founder/CEO

Philip is a second-time founder who previously spent time at McKinsey & Co. working on satellite projects for national space agencies. Philip has an MPA in National Security & Technology from Harvard University, an MBA from Wharton, an MA in Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics from Columbia University, and is a CFA Charter holder.



### Ezra Feilden, Founder

Ezra has a decade of experience with satellite design, specializing in deployable solar arrays and large deployable structures. Ezra comes from Airbus Defense & Space (SSTL) and Oxford Space Systems, where he worked on many missions, including NASA's Lunar Pathfinder. Ezra has a PhD in Materials Engineering from Imperial College London.



### Adi Oltean, Founder

I have a software and hardware background. As part of SpaceX and Microsoft I delivered key features in satellite networks, operating systems, cloud and machine learning infra. My focus areas at Lumen include software, hardware and engineering design aspects of our satellite constellation.



### Company Launches

[### Lumen Orbit 🚀 Data Centers in Space](



**TL;DR** - We should train future large AI models in space to make use of abundant solar energy, cooling, and the ability to freely scale up.
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Hey all, we're building data centers in space. We’re launching our first satellite next year, which will have the most powerful GPUs ever put in space by \>100x. We will launch a larger iteration each year until we reach gigawatt scale.

**❌The Problem**
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Future hyperscale data centers will put a huge strain on electricity grids, freshwater distribution, and the Western world’s permitting systems. It will simply not be possible to deploy multi-gigawatt scale data centers rapidly in the way we build data centers today.

**✨Our Solution**
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We take advantage of falling launch costs to make use of inexpensive solar energy in space and low-cost passive radiative cooling, rapidly scaling up orbital data centers almost indefinitely without the physical or permitting constraints faced on Earth. This will ensure we can continue training ever larger models without destroying the environment.

**⚙️ Read our white paper**
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Check out our [**white paper**]( for more information on why space data centers are the future and how we’re going about making this happen.

See a short video on the design [here](

**🏆 What we’ve achieved so far**
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*   Booked our first launch (May 2025) and our second launch (H2 2026)
*   Set up our payload manufacturing facility in Redmond, WA
*   Designed and started building and testing our first spacecraft, with the fastest GPUs to ever launch to space by ~100x
*   Created concept designs for our micro data center (2026 launch) and our Hypercluster data center (launching when Starship-class launch vehicles enter commercial service)
*   Secured high-value LOIs for H100 compute time in space

**🔜 What’s next**
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*   Launch and complete our demonstrator mission, which will train the first LLM in space!
*   Prototype our micro-data center design
*   Secure contracts which incumbent hyper scalers

**👥 Our Team**
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[**Philip**]( CEO, is a second-time founder who has worked at McKinsey & Co. working on satellite projects for national space agencies. Philip has an MPA in National Security & Technology from Harvard University, an MBA from Wharton, an MA in Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics from Columbia University, and is a CFA Charter holder.

[**Ezra**]( CTO, has a decade of experience with satellite design, specializing in deployable solar arrays and large deployable structures. Ezra comes from Airbus Defense & Space (SSTL) and Oxford Space Systems, where he worked on missions including NASA's Lunar Pathfinder. Ezra has a PhD in Materials Engineering from Imperial College London.

[**Adi**]( Chief Engineer, was previously a Principal Software Engineer at SpaceX, where he was part of the Starlink network team enabling Starlink for in-motion users, including Starship. Before that, he deployed the first LLMs on large GPU production clusters at Microsoft, where he also delivered more than 25 patents in more than two decades. Adi holds degrees in Computer Science and Chemistry from the top two universities in Bucharest.

**🙏 Asks**
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Join our team! If you are or know any hardcore engineers with experience in aerospace or data center infrastructure and are interested in working with the Lumen team, please get in touch!

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We are also interested in talking to operators and customers of hyperscale training clusters who are contemplating the scale-up from megawatts to gigawatts.

#### Company Photo



### YC S24 Application Video
