The company formerly known as Aetherflux has raised a $275M Series B—and has embarked on an ambitious pivot to dramatically expand its space-solar-power business to include orbital data centers and rockets.
Allow me to reintroduce myself: To better align with its new business, Aetherflux is rebranding to Cowboy Space Corporation. Founder and CEO Baiju Bhatt told Payload that the name was selected because “it captures the scale of ambition that we’ve got with the new set of objectives,” and paints an optimistic picture of the company “blazing our own trail in space.” The company is also debuting a Western-themed mission statement: “Powering humanity from the high frontier.”
New business: A little over a year ago, the company raised a $50M Series A—its first outside investment—with the goal of building a small-sat constellation that would collect solar power in space, and deliver it to Earth via infrared lasers.
The company’s new focus will still include a constellation in LEO to collect solar power—but Bhatt said the majority of the business will shift to two new priorities: a launch vehicle, and in-space computing.
- Cowboy Space has designed the rocket’s upper stage and data center to be a single vehicle, unlike a traditional rocket that delivers a separate payload to space.
- Once in orbit, the upper stage will operate as a 1 megawatt data center.
Bhatt said designing a launch vehicle allows for seamless integration with the upper-stage-slash-data-center—and gives the company dedicated space access at a time when launch capacity is strained.
“Our viewpoint on this is if we want to build for scale, and have a degree of control over the economics…this is a critical piece we have to invest in and own,” he said.
The round: Index Ventures led the Series B, which was raised at a $2B valuation. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Construct Capital, and IVP also contributed to the round.
What’s next: Cowboy Space plans to launch its first satellite this year, as the company aims to demo its ability to beam power from space to Earth. Bhatt said the first rocket would launch no earlier than the end of 2028.
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