Dunamu & Partners, Dunamu's investment subsidiary, has made a strategic investment in Starcloud, a promising US startup developing data centers in low Earth orbit.
According to the company on October 26, the funding round totaled $250 million, approximately 331.1 billion won, and was led by Manhattan West Ventures, with participation from Nvidia, Cisco Investments, Benchmark and EQT. Dunamu & Partners was the only Korean investment firm to participate in the round.
Starcloud's total funding has reached $450 million, approximately 600 billion won, and its post-money valuation was assessed at $2.3 billion, approximately 3.0461 trillion won. Founded in 2024 by engineers from SpaceX's Starlink and Airbus, Starcloud aims to address in space the physical constraints on terrestrial data centers, whose expansion faces bottlenecks caused by insufficient grid capacity and difficulties securing land and cooling water. Its concept is to build the most cost-efficient next-generation computing infrastructure within the next 10 years by using a space environment that can provide solar power 24 hours a day and release waste heat into deep space without cooling water.
The company has also completed a technology demonstration. In November 2025, Starcloud launched its first satellite, the 60 kg-class Starcloud-1, and successfully operated an Nvidia H100 GPU in low Earth orbit. It also carried Google's open model Gemma and demonstrated inference capabilities by analyzing observation data from satellite radar company Capella Space in real time in orbit to detect vessels in distress and wildfires. Starcloud has applied to the US Federal Communications Commission for authorization to operate a constellation totaling 88,000 satellites and 20 GW of orbital computing capacity. It plans to use the funding to accelerate expansion of satellite manufacturing capacity and development of a production line for its next-generation Starcloud-3 satellite.
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Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston said: "Korea is one of the countries adopting AI services most rapidly, with the second-largest number of paid ChatGPT subscribers in the world. This pace of adoption demonstrates growing demand for computing resources, and I believe Korea can become a global leader in testing new ways to expand AI computing capacity, including in orbit." Johnston added: "We hope Korean investor Dunamu & Partners will use its market insight and network to connect us with promising local partners."
Lee Kang-jun, head of Dunamu & Partners, said: "We took note of Starcloud as a company that is making space data centers a reality ahead of major technology companies, not only through its technology but also through its ability to attract talent and capital. We hope this investment will open a channel for a company with technology at the global forefront to connect with Korean companies as a collaboration partner or technology supplier, contributing to the development of Korea's industrial ecosystem."
Original Korean article: ZDNet Korea
English brief by Korea Wind Intelligence, koreawindintel.com
