Southern California-based startup Sophia Space has raised $3.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to advance its ambitious plan to deploy modular compute and data centers in orbit. The initiative aims to enhance real-time processing of Earth-observation data, which could be vital for intelligence gathering, disaster response, and emergency management.
The funding round was led by Unlock Venture Partners, with participation from angel investors and key figures in the space industry.
Founded by Leon Alkalai, a retired technical fellow from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sophia Space is developing scalable, energy-efficient infrastructure that enables AI-driven data processing directly in space. This approach, Alkalai explained, will significantly reduce latency in delivering critical information to Earth, potentially saving lives during time-sensitive events such as natural disasters.
At the core of Sophia’s technology is TILE, a platform optimized for low-latency and energy-efficient AI computing. The architecture is built around solid-state, self-sustaining compute modules, which feature integrated solar power and advanced space cooling systems. These modules are designed to be deployed in orbit to create a distributed network of processing nodes.
“Our customers — from satellite operators to commercial space stations — simply want their data processed and delivered more rapidly,” said Rob DeMillo, CEO of Sophia Space. “Sophia delivers orbital edge computing — processing workloads directly in space, near the source of data, and dramatically reducing the time to insight on Earth.”
Sophia has also entered into a memorandum of understanding with Axiom Space to explore the potential of orbital data centers in support of Golden Dome, a proposed missile defense initiative first introduced during the Trump administration. The collaboration seeks to demonstrate how Sophia’s technology could serve national security applications by rapidly processing and relaying space-based data.
Jason Aspiotis, Axiom Space’s global director for in-space data and security, emphasized that Sophia’s TILE architecture provides a foundation for scalable orbital data centers. “This lays the groundwork for a distributed space network that could offer megawatts of processing power in orbit,” he said.
As the space economy continues to grow, Sophia Space is positioning itself at the forefront of orbital edge computing, a sector that could redefine how data is handled, analyzed, and utilized in near-Earth space.
