HELSINKI — A Beijing-based space startup has secured early-stage funding and extensive credit support as part of China’s broader push for space-based computing infrastructure.
Beijing Orbital Twilight Technology Co., Ltd., also known as Orbital Chenguang, announced the completion of its Pre-A1 funding round on April 20th. Venture and industrial investors including Haisong Capital, CITIC Construction Investment Capital, Cathay Capital, InnoAngel Fund, Anhui Xinhua Group, Zhike Industrial Investment, Kunlun Capital, and Lizhe Fund participated in this round. The company did not disclose the amount of equity raised in the Pre-A1 round in its statement.
At the same time, Orbital Chenguang announced that it has secured strategic financing facilities totaling 57.7 billion yuan ($8.4 billion) from 12 major financial institutions, including Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of Communications, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and CITIC Bank.
Although such credit agreements typically represent potential financing rather than committed capital, the backing and the scale of the players involved indicate strong institutional support for the company’s plans as it sits within the broader ecosystem.
Orbital Chenguang is operated by the Beijing Astronomical Future Space Technology Institute, which itself is supported by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission and the Zhongguancun Science Park Management Bureau. The institute leads a consortium of 24 organizations from across the industrial chain. Zhang Shancong serves as both the director of the Beijing Institute of Astronomy and Future Space Technology and the chief scientist of Orbital Chenguang. The company thus appears to represent a commercial node in a broader state-backed effort to develop space-based data center infrastructure.
Zhang explained Constellation’s rationale at a press conference in November. “Large-scale data centers are expanding rapidly around the world, but further growth faces major obstacles such as heavy use of land, rapid increase in energy consumption, and limited atmospheric cooling,” China Daily quoted Zhang as saying.
In November, the Chinese-language Science and Technology Daily reported that the Beijing Institute of Astronomy and Future Research is planning a constellation in Xiaoyu orbit about 700 to 800 kilometers above Earth, aiming to realize a large-scale space data center that will support space-based computing by 2035. The power capacity of the space data center is reported to be over 1 gigawatt.
A special type of sun-synchronous orbit, this orbit provides near-continuous solar power generation and passive cooling of space’s thermal environment, theoretically enabling data center workloads at a scale unrealistic on Earth, but significant challenges remain, such as thermal management.
The initial phase, spanning 2025 to 2027, will focus on core technical challenges and the initial constellation ramp-up phase, followed by the integration of Earth-based data processing and space-based computing power between 2028 and 2030. The experimental satellite Chengguang 1 was scheduled to launch in late 2025 or early 2026, but appears to have not been launched, while an undisclosed number of satellites were lost in the debut flights of Ceres 2 and Tianlong 3 this year.
This effort appears to resonate with some strategies that China’s major space contractors and broader central government say emphasize and support commercial space. CASC laid out its plans for the next five years in January, citing alignment with China’s 15th Five-Year Plan and proposing gigawatt-scale space-based computing infrastructure that envisions an integrated cloud-edge terminal architecture in orbit. With China moving late last year to integrate commercial space into its national planning framework, CASC could serve as a strategic coordinator for a broader ecosystem of commercial and state-related actors, rather than initiating a single monolithic project.
Although not explicitly stated, the gigawatt-level nature of the constellations suggests that the number of constellations could be in the thousands or more, depending on the power capacity of the satellites. China is already looking beyond these projects, expanding its spaceport to build Wang Constellation and Qianfan Constellation, while working to augment its launch vehicles and achieve reusability. In December, China applied to the International Telecommunication Union for two constellations, each covering 96,714 satellites. Although detailed deployment plans have not been disclosed, the filing suggests efforts to secure spectrum and orbital resources for potential future mega-constellations. There is no clear evidence that our data center efforts are directly related to these claims.
Space-based data centers are being promoted around the world, including Google’s Suncatcher and SpaceX’s million-satellite constellation project. Space data centers are also thought to face challenges in the physics of thermal management and data transmission, and the economics of launch and system costs.
Orbital Chenguang is not China’s only space computing effort. ADA Space and Zhejiang Lab launched 12 satellites for a three-body edge computing constellation in May 2025. Shanghai Bailing Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd. recently received tens of millions of yuan in early stage funding and plans to launch a demonstration satellite later this year towards a 100kW class computing satellite. Zhongke Tiansuan (Comospace) is also equipping its Jilin 1 satellite with Aurora 1000 computing technology.
These developments demonstrate strong interest in space computing in China, and Orbital Chenguang has secured strong institutional support to address the technical and economic challenges associated with realizing orbital data centers.
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