Orbital Industries raises 50 million US dollars

The London-based deep tech company Orbital Industries has closed a Series B financing round of 50 million US dollars. The round was led by Plural. Also participating are existing and former investors such as NVentures (NVIDIA), Radical Ventures, Compound and Fly Ventures.

Orbital Industries intends to use the fresh capital to scale its data center products, expand its engineering and AI teams in London and San Francisco and drive forward its own AI platform for other industrial applications.

AI infrastructure as the next bottleneck

While the development of powerful AI models is progressing rapidly, physical infrastructures are increasingly reaching their limits. According to Orbital Industries, energy supply, cooling and the provision of new data centers in particular are becoming the biggest challenges for scaling modern AI systems.

The company develops hardware solutions "from the atoms up". The aim is to develop industrial technologies significantly faster with the help of AI and bring them to market.

Focus on cooling and modular data centers

At the market launch, Orbital Industries is focusing on solutions for data centers. These include a specially developed dielectric coolant for the next generation of GPUs. Unlike many existing solutions, this does not contain PFAS chemicals and therefore meets stricter regulatory requirements in Europe and the USA.

In addition, the company is developing modular data center systems that, according to Orbital, should be ready for use within six months.

Orbital Industries is already working with leading operators, including AWS, to develop new cooling and efficiency technologies for hyperscale data centers.

Proprietary AI engine simulates atomic systems

The technological basis is the company's own AI engine Orb. It simulates the quantum mechanical behavior of atoms and should be able to calculate physical systems significantly faster than previous approaches.

According to the company, Orb is the only model that can simulate up to 100,000 atoms on a single GPU and works up to ten times faster than comparable systems from industry and research. The aim is to bring together material development, engineering and industrial production in a fully AI-supported process for the first time.

Expansion beyond data centers planned

Orbital Industries currently employs around 50 people in London and San Francisco. In the long term, the company plans to expand its platform to other sectors such as semiconductors, energy, aviation and critical raw materials.

What used to take a decade, we can now do in a matter of months.

Jonathan Godwin, CEO and Co-Founder Orbital Industries

CEO and co-founder Jonathan Godwin sees this as a fundamental change in industrial development. With the new funding, Orbital Industries is positioning itself as one of the most ambitious European players at the intersection of AI, DeepTech and industrial infrastructure.