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SpaceComputer Raises $10M to Bring Trusted Execution to Orbit, Merge Cryptography, Satellites, and Confidential Smart Contracts

By Daniel Bar —
SpaceComputer Raises $10M to Bring Trusted Execution to Orbit, Merge Cryptography, Satellites, and Confidential Smart Contracts

SpaceComputer, developers of satellite infrastructure to deliver a tamper-resistant onchain environment, today announced its seed round, having raised $10 million to bring its in-orbit Celestial network to space. The raise is intended to support the launch of an initial satellite constellation, custom space-grade hardware design, consensus development, ecosystem development, and go-to-market for several highly-anticipated security services.

The round was co-led by Maven11 and Lattice, followed by Superscrypt, Ethereal, Arbitrum Foundation, Starship Ventures, Nascent (who is following on), Hash3, Blockchain Builders Fund, Amber, CMS, Bitscale Capital, Bodhi Ventures, Offchain Labs, Hashkey, Moonrock Capital, Chorus One, imToken Ventures, Unit (Rand Hindi), Plutos Capital, Encode Club, Wise3 Ventures.

Individuals included Marc Weinstein, Jason Yanowitz (Blockworks), Ameen Soleimani (0xBowio & Privacy Pools), Not3Lau (Daryl and Daren Lau), Will Price, Joon Ian, Batu (Celestia), Zheng Leong Chua (Automata), Yoni Ben-Shimon, and others.This follows the company’s pre-seed round announced in May this year, led by Primitive Ventures and with participation from Nascent, Tangent Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Public Works, Merkle Ventures, and Starshield. Angels included Loi Luu, Sandeep Nailwal, and Meltem Demirors. 

Advancing towards (Rocket) Launch

Led by co-founders Daniel Exponent and Filip Rezabek, along with research coordinator Professor Dahlia Malkhi, SpaceComputer is building a tamper-resistant blockchain network powered by satellites, enabling secure computation beyond the reach of Earth-based threats. The project proves that space is open for business and holds the key to the next chapter of human connectivity.

Since its founding, SpaceComputer has achieved several key milestones, including the launch of its first testing satellites with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 mission, and the release of the Orbitport API gateway and the cTRNG developer toolkit for verifiable randomness sourced from orbit. It has also begun onboarding early developers and researchers experimenting with verifiable entropy and off-Earth compute primitives in Ethereum-compatible environments.

SpaceComputer actively collaborates with several leading academic and research institutions worldwide. Through a formal partnership with the Technical University of Munich (TUM) research group and Venture Labs Aerospace, SpaceComputer has access to essential institutional-grade infrastructure. As alumni of the IC3 Accelerator, the team is deeply connected to the Cornell Tech research community. In addition, SpaceComputer, together with Professor Malkhi and her team of researchers, is engaged in grant-funded research at UC Santa Barbara.

Use of Funds

The seed round will enable SpaceComputer to build and deploy the first Space-Native Trusted Execution Environment (SpaceTEE) units: orbital root of trust nodes that provide high security guarantees. This will be the foundational components of a space based verifiable compute and cryptographic services 

Specifically, the raise will fund:

  • Satellite design, build, and launches, to solidify the foundation of the network, as outlined in the roadmap. This will be carried out with the help of launch partners that will be announced in due course.
  • A custom secure computing hardware specifying the architecture and configuration for space-grade nodes, the result of significant research carried out since project founding.
  • Development of the validator client and full implementation of SpaceComputer’s unique consensus protocol based in part on the research of advisor Dahlia Malkhi.
  • Launch of new security services, including confidential computation via SpaceTEE, co-processing, and eventually custodial services, and immutable logging.
“The SpaceComputer project represents an optimistic, yet pragmatic cypherpunk ambition. Space is open for business and we are rapidly entering an era where more and more applications include space based computation and communication layers. The importance and opportunity of space for decentralized technologies is undeniable”  remarked co-founder Daniel Bar. “With this funding, we’re accelerating the path from research to real satellites powering public network of tamper-resistant compute.”
Fellow co-founder Filip Rezabek adds: “Space is opening to a broader audience and we are excited to be part of it. We aim to provide enhanced security to users through verifiable computing, while ensuring usability comparable to on-earth systems. The funding enables us to expand our R&D efforts, finalize protocol specifications, and deploy several native space-based applications and security services.   This is unlocked by our first satellites fulfilling our unique requirements.”

This seed round marks the next step in SpaceComputer’s mission to bring tamper-resistant compute beyond Earth. Our early community of builders and supporters has helped shape our vision from day one, and we invite others to join the next phase, from upcoming (rocket!) launches to open research and experiments in orbital trust. Join the conversation on Telegram. 

Media contact:
david@spacecomputer.io
https://spacecomputer.io