Dunamu & Partners Invests in U.S. Space Data Center Company 'Starcloud'

Sole Korean Investor in $250 Million Funding Round

Dunamu & Partners, the investment-focused subsidiary of Dunamu, announced on October 26 that it had invested in Starcloud, a U.S. startup building low Earth orbit data centers.

(From left) Starcloud co-founder and CTO Ezra Feilden, CEO Philip Johnston, and Senior Engineer Adi Oltean / Photo by Dunamu & Partners

The round totaled $250 million (approximately 331.1 billion won) and was led by Manhattan West Ventures, with participation from Nvidia, Cisco Investments, Benchmark, EQT and others. Following the investment, the company was valued at $2.3 billion (approximately 3.0461 trillion won). Dunamu & Partners was the only Korean investor in the round.

Founded in 2024 by engineers from SpaceX's Starlink and Airbus, Starcloud is a space data center company. Considering the physical limitations of terrestrial data centers, the company believes space data centers will become the most cost-efficient and scalable way to provide computing capacity within the next 10 years.

Expanding terrestrial data centers faces bottlenecks in securing grid connections, land and cooling water at the same time. In space, however, solar power is available 24 hours a day, and waste heat can be radiated into deep space without cooling water. Leveraging these conditions, the company is developing data center satellites equipped with solar panels, radiation shielding and thermal control systems designed for the space environment.

The technology has already been tested. Starcloud-1, the company's first 60-kilogram-class satellite, launched in November 2025, was the first to operate an Nvidia H100 GPU in low Earth orbit. Starcloud is currently the only company operating an H100 in orbit. The satellite also carried Google's open Gemma model and performed inference. Starcloud-1 is analyzing observation data from synthetic aperture radar company Capella Space in orbit to detect ships in distress and wildfires.

Starcloud has applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for operating authorization, with the goal of building a constellation of 88,000 satellites and 20 gigawatts (GW) of orbital computing capacity. The funds raised in this round will be used to expand manufacturing capabilities and develop a production line for its next-generation orbital data center satellite, Starcloud-3.

“We look forward to exploring partnerships in Korea, and hope that Korean investor Dunamu & Partners will serve as a bridge to promising local partners, drawing on its market insights and network,” said Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston.

“We took note of Starcloud as a company that is making space data centers a reality ahead of big tech companies, not only through its technological capabilities but also through its ability to attract talent and capital and execute,” said Lee Kangjun, CEO of Dunamu & Partners. “We hope this investment will open a channel for companies with technologies at the global forefront to connect with domestic companies as collaboration partners or technology suppliers, contributing to the development of Korea's industrial ecosystem.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.