In addition to developing radiation-tolerant computing, optical communications, deployable solar arrays and orbital thermal-management systems, Cowboy must successfully design, manufacture, test and license a new rocket. Its launch vehicle would require authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration in addition to the approvals needed for the satellite constellation.
Cowboy nevertheless enters the race with considerably more capital than Orbital. The company announced a $275 million Series B round in May at a reported $2 billion valuation. Founded in 2024 by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, with a focus on space-based solar power before expanding into orbital computing and launch systems.
One Hundred Kilowatts Versus One Megawatt
The clearest distinction between the two proposals is the capacity assigned to each node.
Orbital’s production design calls for approximately 100 kilowatts of computing power per satellite. Cowboy is targeting megawatt-class spacecraft, potentially giving each Stampede node approximately 10 times the power capacity of an Orbital satellite.
At their stated maximum scales, Orbital’s 100,000 satellites would provide approximately 10 gigawatts. If Cowboy ultimately achieved one megawatt across all 20,000 Stampede spacecraft, its theoretical aggregate capacity would approach 20 gigawatts.
Those figures should be treated as design objectives, not capacity forecasts. Neither company has demonstrated even one operational node at its proposed production power level.
Orbital’s smaller satellites may be easier to test and deploy incrementally. The company can begin with a single hosted GPU, progress to a purpose-built prototype and expand as launch economics and customer demand permit.
Cowboy’s larger nodes could provide more useful computing capacity with fewer satellites and potentially fewer launches. Combining the rocket stage and data center would also reduce the amount of structural mass that does not directly support power generation or computing.
The tradeoff is concentration risk. The failure of a megawatt Cowboy spacecraft would remove considerably more capacity than the loss of a 100-kilowatt Orbital node. Cowboy’s model also depends on its new launch platform succeeding alongside the data-center technology.
Orbital avoids the expense of developing a rocket but remains exposed to the pricing, payload limitations and launch schedules of outside providers. Pathfinder, for example, is scheduled to fly through SpaceX and is subject to any operational issues that SpaceX need deal with.
Why Both Companies are Looking Beyond the Grid
The appeal of orbital computing begins with the expanding electricity requirements of AI. Orbital and Cowboy contend that low Earth orbit offers an alternative source of energy. Solar panels above the atmosphere receive stronger and, in carefully selected orbits, more consistent sunlight than ground-mounted systems affected by weather, atmospheric absorption and the day-night cycle.
Orbital says solar intensity in space can reach approximately 1,361 watts per square meter. Cowboy similarly argues that placing the silicon next to the sunlight would allow Stampede to avoid the delays and expense of building grid-connected infrastructure on Earth.
The companies also emphasize the absence of cooling-water requirements. An orbital data center would not need cooling towers, chillers or evaporative cooling systems of the type used by many terrestrial facilities.
That does not mean cooling in space is effortless. It is still a complex issue to solve, if only because a vacuum prevents heat from escaping through conventional air movement. Heat generated by GPUs must be moved away from the processors and released as infrared radiation through radiator surfaces.
NASA describes spacecraft thermal control as a balance between a number of factors, including internally generated heat, incoming solar energy and radiative heat rejection. High-power computing will therefore require large, lightweight radiators, dependable fluid loops or other thermal-transfer systems and careful protection from direct solar exposure.
Space may eliminate cooling-water consumption, but thermal management will become the largest determinants of spacecraft size, mass and reliability.
Inference May Come Before Orbital AI Training
Orbital is initially designing its platform for AI inference rather than attempting to train the largest frontier models in space.
That is a pragmatic distinction. Large-scale AI training requires thousands of accelerators to exchange data continuously with extremely low latency. Reproducing the tightly connected architecture of a terrestrial AI cluster across moving satellites and optical links would be exceptionally difficult. Inference requests can be smaller and more independent. Space-based computing may be particularly useful when the original data is already being generated in orbit.
Earth-observation satellites, for example, collect far more imagery and sensor data than can always be transmitted efficiently to ground stations. Onboard processing could identify wildfires, military activity, weather patterns or other events and transmit only useful results.
Academic work on cooperative orbital computing has proposed distributing such processing among satellite meshes connected by laser links, reducing the volume of raw information that must be sent back to Earth. And this could be the clearest benefit of any space-based solution.
For terrestrial workloads, both Orbital and Cowboy will still need extensive ground connectivity. Data must be transmitted into orbit, processed and returned without introducing unacceptable delays or communications costs.
Economics Remain Unproven
Neither company has demonstrated that orbital compute can compete economically with a terrestrial data center.
Orbital must manufacture its satellites at unprecedented scale while purchasing enough launch capacity to deploy and replenish the constellation. Cowboy hopes to improve the economics by controlling its launch vehicle, but developing a new rocket can consume billions of dollars before routine commercial operations begin.
Both companies must also account for hardware failures, radiation damage, launch losses, deorbiting costs and rapid GPU obsolescence.
Insurance markets are only beginning to examine those risks. Brokers and underwriters told Reuters in June that discussions about orbital AI infrastructure remained preliminary because insurers lack sufficient operating data to model failures and value fast-depreciating AI hardware in space. Insurance will become particularly important if orbital-data-center companies eventually rely on debt rather than venture capital to finance expansion.
Orbital’s $5 million financing is enough to support an early demonstration, but not its large constellation plan. Cowboy’s $275 million round provides a much longer runway, although the company is simultaneously pursuing spacecraft, data center and rocket development.
The Regulatory Challenge May Rival the Engineering
Together, the Orbital and Cowboy proposals seek permission for as many as 120,000 satellites.
Orbital’s application alone would significantly exceed the approximately 15,000 active satellites that Secure World Foundation estimated were in orbit as of May 2026. Cowboy’s 20,000-satellite filing would also exceed the existing active population.
Constellations of this scale raise questions about collision avoidance, orbital congestion, failed spacecraft, launch emissions, atmospheric effects from reentry and interference with astronomical observations.
Secure World Foundation has recommended phased authorizations, system-level risk analysis and stricter reporting for large orbital-data-center proposals. The organization argues that compliance cannot be assessed solely at the individual-satellite level because even low failure rates can produce significant cumulative risks when multiplied across tens of thousands of spacecraft.
In early June, Cowboy asked the FCC for flexibility from conventional deployment milestones, arguing that Stampede could begin commercial operations with a single satellite and then scale according to demand and technological progress. Its plan to rely primarily on optical rather than radio-frequency links also falls somewhat outside traditional spectrum-coordination models.
Two Architectures, One Enormous Bet
Orbital and Cowboy Space are making the same fundamental wager: that AI’s demand for electricity will eventually grow faster than terrestrial grids can accommodate and that the cost of reaching orbit will decline enough to make solar-powered computing satellites competitive.
Orbital’s architecture may be easier to demonstrate in stages. Cowboy’s could eventually deliver more computing capacity with fewer spacecraft and less duplicated launch hardware. Orbital carries less launch-development risk but remains dependent on outside rocket companies.
The most important milestones will not be the 100,000th Orbital satellite or the completion of Cowboy’s 20,000-node Stampede. They will be the first GPU that operates reliably through repeated thermal cycles, the first commercial workload processed economically in orbit and the first customer willing to pay for the service.
Until then, both plans remain ambitious regulatory filings backed by early-stage engineering. They make one point clear: as the AI industry searches for power, the boundaries of the data-center market are expanding far beyond campuses, utility territories and national borders. The next major computing region may not appear on any terrestrial map. It may become something that you can look up and see.
