Lumen Orbit, a Redmond, Washington-based startup, has closed an oversubscribed $10 million seed round, one of the hottest deals to come out of Y Combinator's 2024 summer batch. The company is pursuing an ambitious plan to build a network of data centers in space, capable of scaling to a gigawatt capacity, specifically designed to train large AI models.

Founded in January 2024, Lumen Orbit has made significant progress, with plans to launch its demonstrator satellite in 2025 in partnership with Nvidia's Inception program. The startup's innovative solution addresses the growing concern of data center energy consumption, which is expected to reach 9% of overall US energy consumption by 2030.

Lumen Orbit's seed round is a testament to the interest and confidence of venture capitalists in the company's moonshot idea. While customer adoption may pose a challenge, VCs are drawn to startups offering original solutions to significant problems. With this funding, Lumen Orbit is poised to take a giant leap in making space-based AI data centers a reality.