Hogan Lovells advises Sophia Space as it closes US$10 million seed round to accelerate orbital edge computing

The funding, led by Alpha Funds, KDDI Green Partners Fund, and Unlock Venture Partners, will accelerate development of the company’s next-generation orbital computing systems, proprietary thermal technology, and expand its engineering team to deliver autonomous compute solutions in space.

Led by Rob DeMillo (former NASA/JPL, Lincoln Labs) and founded by Dr. Leon Alkalai (30-year veteran of NASA/JPL), Sophia Space is redefining computing in orbit through a scalable, space-native approach to thermal management. The company’s technology is built for the extreme thermal, power, and radiation environments of space—enabling AI, cloud, and scientific workloads to operate reliably and at scale beyond Earth.

“Hogan Lovells was instrumental throughout this monumental Seed round,” said Rob DeMillo, Co founder and CEO of Sophia Space. “Their deep understanding of our industry, combined with a highly pragmatic, solutions driven approach, made them invaluable throughout this process. Moving high performance compute into orbit isn’t just growth. It’s a separator. As we push the boundaries of what’s possible, we’re grateful to have a legal team that understands both the complexity of our technology and our broader mission.”

“Sophia Space is tackling some of the most complex challenges at the intersection of space, energy, and computing, and we were proud to advise them on this milestone Seed round and support a team that is redefining what scalable, space native computing looks like,” said partner Todd Schwartz.

“In orbit and space based data centers will become a critically important part of future space infrastructure, and our space and satellite practice is well positioned to support companies like Sophia Space that are operating at the most innovative edges of the space industry,” added partner Alexis Sainz. “That capability is further strengthened by our data center group, which includes a dedicated 50 partner task force focused on this industry leading work.”

More information on the transaction can be found here.

The Hogan Lovells deal team was led by partners Todd Schwartz (Private Equity & Funds, Silicon Valley), Steve Kaufman (M&A and global co-lead for the Space & Satellite Practice, Washington, D.C.), Alexis Sainz (IERP and global co-lead for the Space & Satellite Practice, Washington, D.C.), with support from senior associate Dalton Rodriguez (M&A, Boston) and associate Julia Malave (M&A, Washington, D.C).