Orbital Industries Raises $50M Series B for AI-Designed Data-Center Hardware
May 28, 2026 – 8:18 am
The London-and-San-Francisco startup, formerly known as Orbital Materials, has closed $50M in a Series B funding round led by Plural. Other participants include Nvidia’s NVentures, Radical Ventures, Compound, and Fly Ventures.
This funding will be used to scale the commercial deployment of their data-center cooling fluid and modular compute infrastructure products, as well as expand their team globally.
Company Rebranding and Future Vision
The company has rebranded to Orbital Industries to reflect its expanded scope. Founded in 2022 by Jonathan Godwin (formerly of DeepMind), James Gin-Pollock, and Daniel Miodovnik, Orbital Materials initially focused on AI-discovered carbon-capture technology for sustainable aviation fuel. They have since pivoted towards data-center infrastructure, with plans to apply their model to semiconductors, critical minerals, aerospace, and energy in the long term.
Key Products
Product 1: A PFAS-free dielectric cooling fluid designed for high-density GPUs, addressing regulatory bans on "forever chemicals" and meeting the power density challenges of next-generation GPU generations.
Product 2: A modular, off-site manufactured data center system delivered as ready-to-deploy units, aiming to reduce deployment timelines from three years to just six months compared to traditional facilities.
Their unique differentiator is their AI-led engineering loop that designs the modules, utilizing Orb, an open-source AI model for simulating quantum mechanical behavior of atoms, capable of handling large-scale enzyme simulations with a single GPU.