Lonestar sees the Moon having advantages for data centers.
Lonestar Data Holdings, a startup developing a data center for Moon-based operations, has raised $5 million in a seed round.
The St. Petersburg, Florida-based company plans to land its first data center on the Moon by the end of 2023, it said on March 6. The company had previously announced plans to fly a proof-of-concept aboard Intuitive Machine’s Nova-C lunar lander.
Lonestar has billed the Moon as a safe, environmentally friendly place to store high-value data such as operating software for oil rigs, banking software, electoral rolls or other essential government records.
Lonestar has also argued that the Moon offers special jurisdiction advantages, allowing data owners to circumvent data sovereignty laws. The startup has said it believes it can transmit 15 to 16 gigabits per second to Earth. It also pitches lunar data centers as environmentally friendly, saying the equipment would run on solar power and its cooling would not contribute to global warming.
In addition to providing off-world data storage services, Lonestar has said it believes it will also be able to offer its data centers as an edge computing service for lunar landers, rovers and satellites.
The company’s seed round was led by Scout Ventures, with participation from Seldor Capital, 2 Future Holding, The Veteran Fund, Irongate Capital, Atypical Ventures and KittyHawk Ventures.
“We believe that expanding the world’s economy to encompass the Moon, which happens to be the Earth’s most stable satellite, is the next whitespace in the New Space economy,” says Brad Harrison, Scout Ventures’ managing partner. “Data security and storage will be a necessary part of leading the new generation of lunar exploration.”
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