Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt's Cowboy Space secures $275M Series B at $2B valuation to launch its own rockets and deploy crucial space infrastructure.
Cowboy Space Corporation, the latest venture from Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, has closed a formidable $275 million Series B funding round, catapulting its post-money valuation to $2 billion. The company’s audacious plan: to build and launch its own rockets to deploy orbital data centers, a move that immediately reshapes the emerging space infrastructure landscape.
Bhatt, a co-founder who helped redefine retail investing, is now setting his sights on the final frontier, pivoting Cowboy Space from its initial focus on space-based solar power. The shift underscores a growing, almost desperate, belief among tech's elite that the insatiable demand for AI compute will soon exhaust terrestrial data center capacity, forcing a move to orbit.
The substantial Series B, led by earlier backer Index Ventures with participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Construct Capital, IVP, and SAIC, is earmarked squarely for this ambitious rocket program. Bhatt told TechCrunch he expects the company's first proprietary rocket launch before the end of 2028. That's a timeline that would make many established aerospace players raise an eyebrow.
Building a launch vehicle in-house is not just a strategic decision; it’s a colossal undertaking. It places Cowboy Space in direct, head-on competition with the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin, firms with billions in funding and decades of combined engineering pedigree. This isn't just difficult; it's borderline insane from a capital and engineering perspective.
The broader space industry is undeniably choked by a launch capacity bottleneck, especially for heavy-lift vehicles needed to deploy significant orbital infrastructure. While a flurry of new rockets are in development, the commercial availability of truly scalable and cost-effective options remains years away, creating a significant impediment for any company eyeing large-scale space operations.
Bhatt's rationale for this pivot is straightforward: he couldn't find sufficient launch capacity to scale an orbital data center business, nor could he secure unit economics competitive with terrestrial alternatives through existing providers. "There's a lot of new rockets that are coming online, but as we look three, four years out, it's still very, very scarce," Bhatt stated, adding that he believes first-party rocket providers will increasingly "specialize into their own payloads."
This scarcity, however, doesn’t diminish the staggering challenge. Only a handful of private companies in the West—primarily SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and Arianespace—consistently achieve commercial launches. Others, like Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, have spent years struggling to bring their next-generation vehicles to reliable operational status. Numerous startups, including Stoke Space, Firefly Aerospace, and Relativity Space, have toiled for years and are still working toward delivering operational systems, highlighting the immense difficulty and capital burn involved.
Cowboy Space’s strategy is to integrate its data centers directly into the second stage of its rocket, a throwback design reminiscent of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1. This purpose-built approach, Bhatt argues, will simplify the design process and optimize for its specific payload. Each satellite is envisioned to be a substantial 20,000 to 25,000 kilograms, generating 1 MW of power for just under 800 onboard GPUs.
That power requirement implies a rocket slightly more capable than SpaceX's Falcon 9 workhorse, though still smaller than the Starship, which itself remains deep in development. The company eventually expects its booster stage to be reusable, a common goal among modern launch providers to drive down costs.
To tackle this ambitious engineering feat, Cowboy Space has been actively recruiting top talent from the established space industry. Warren Lamont, a former Blue Origin propulsion engineer, and Tyler Grinnell, a former SpaceX launch director, are among the veterans now onboard. The plan also includes building its own rocket engine, arguably the most complex and expensive component of any launch vehicle.
Yet, the company still faces critical development hurdles, including securing and building facilities for testing, manufacturing, and launching its rockets. These are not trivial details; they represent massive infrastructure investments and regulatory clearances that can delay even the best-funded ventures for years.
The investment by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, founded by Bill Gates, suggests a broader alignment with the planet's energy future, even after the pivot from beaming solar power to Earth. The current focus on orbital compute still ties into the demand for clean, potentially more efficient, data processing.
Bhatt remains bullish on the market opportunity, despite the astronomical challenges. "The prize here, and the size of this market, is big enough that there's room for many players to succeed," he said. He sees the "demand for AI getting more and more acute," with "options on Earth getting more and more limited." This perspective mirrors a growing anxiety within the tech sector about the scalability and environmental footprint of AI's compute requirements.
The history of space development is littered with grand visions that failed to materialize, often due to underestimation of the engineering complexity, regulatory hurdles, or sheer capital requirements. For Cowboy Space, the next few years will be a definitive test of whether a nimble, well-funded startup can truly disrupt the launch industry while simultaneously building an entirely new orbital infrastructure.
This bold bet by Cowboy Space and its investors isn't just about building rockets; it's a profound statement on the future of data and the limits of terrestrial infrastructure. The success or failure of this venture will offer a critical read on whether the AI compute race truly pushes humanity into a new era of space industrialization, or if the dream remains just out of reach.
Frequently asked questions
What is Cowboy Space Corporation?
Cowboy Space Corporation is a new venture founded by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, focused on building and launching its own rockets to deploy orbital data centers.
How much funding did Cowboy Space raise?
Cowboy Space raised $275 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its post-money valuation to $2 billion.
Who founded Cowboy Space?
Cowboy Space was founded by Baiju Bhatt, who is also a co-founder of the popular trading app Robinhood.
What is the primary goal of Cowboy Space?
The primary goal of Cowboy Space is to address the shortage of rockets needed to deploy space infrastructure by building its own launch vehicles for orbital data centers.
What is an orbital data center?
An orbital data center is a proposed facility in Earth's orbit designed to host computing infrastructure, offering potential benefits like lower latency for space-based applications or unique environmental conditions.
How does Cowboy Space impact the space industry?
Cowboy Space's strategy of vertically integrating rocket development with space data centers significantly reshapes the emerging space infrastructure landscape, potentially accelerating the deployment of new orbital capabilities.
