In Brief

Posted:

10:05 AM PDT · March 27, 2026

Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography / TechCrunch

- Tim Fernholz

Aetherflux reportedly raising Series B at $2 billion valuation

Aetherflux, the space solar power startup launched by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, is in talks to raise $250 million to $350 million for a Series B round that would value the company at $2 billion.

The fundraising was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which said that Index Ventures is leading the deal. Aetherflux has collected about $80 million since its founding in 2024. Aetherflux declined to comment.

Aetherflux has shifted focus in recent months as it pushed its power-generating technology toward space data centers, deemphasizing the transmission of electricity to the Earth with lasers that was its starting vision. Space companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Starcloud, and others are now developing novel architectures for distributed compute in space.

“Let the record show we never lifted our pivot foot — it wasn’t a travel,” Bhatt joked in an interview with TechCrunch last week. “The light bulb went off about a year ago that, actually, if you wanted to power AI with the technology that we were thinking about, it would be much more advantageous to actually put the chips in space, rather than project the power from space down to a terrestrial data center.”

While the company plans to continue its experimentation in laser power transmission on a satellite bus built by Apex Space, the company’s first data center satellite is expected in 2027. “Our goal is to build something that competes with terrestrial economics,” Bhatt said.

It won’t be easy.

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