AI startup Orbital Industries raises £37m led by Plural and NVentures
This article covers Orbital Industries, an AI startup, which has raised £37m in a Series B growth funding round to scale its data centre products, expand its AI and engineering teams and accelerate development of an industrial AI platform. The funding is intended to tackle bottlenecks from rising AI compute demand by shortening deployment timelines for higher-density GPU infrastructure, affecting cloud providers, hyperscalers and enterprises deploying AI workloads.
Orbital Industries, an AI startup, has raised £37 million in a growth funding round to scale its data centre products, expand AI and engineering teams and accelerate development of an industrial AI platform that it says compresses materials discovery and hardware development timelines. The raise, announced as a Series B by the company, targets bottlenecks created by rising AI compute demand and denser GPU deployments in data centres.
Why it matters
High-performance AI models are driving much higher GPU density and energy use inside data centres, creating pressure on power, cooling and deployment timelines. Orbital Industries is pitching a combined hardware and software approach aimed at shortening those timelines and enabling operators to deploy higher-density compute more quickly. If its claims hold, that would matter to cloud providers, hyperscalers and enterprises racing to add capacity for AI workloads.
Inside the product
Orbital sells through a commercial arm called Orbital IT. Its core technical claims are twofold. First, a dielectric cooling fluid and companion refrigeration system designed for next-generation GPUs that, the company says, manages higher heat loads in dense compute racks without using PFAS chemicals. The company says the system is being developed with leading data centre operators and includes a multi-year partnership with AWS.
Second, Orbital’s software platform centres on Orb, an AI engine the company says simulates the quantum mechanical behaviour of atoms. Orbital Industries claims Orb can simulate 100,000 atoms on a single GPU and runs ten times faster than competing systems from companies including Microsoft and Meta. The company positions that capability as a way to accelerate materials discovery and engineering workflows that traditionally take years.
Alongside fluids and simulation, Orbital has developed a modular data centre system manufactured off-site and delivered as ready-to-deploy units. The company says the approach can reduce infrastructure deployment timelines from as long as three years to as little as six months, helping operators bring high-density compute online faster. Orbital currently has about 50 staff across London and San Francisco and plans to extend its platform into semiconductors, aerospace, critical minerals and energy.
Who are the investors?
Plural led the round, with participation from NVentures, Radical Ventures, Compound and Fly Ventures. The company said the capital will be used to expand its data centre product line, grow AI and engineering teams and accelerate its industrial AI platform.
In the announcement, Ian Hogarth, Partner at Plural, said:
AI progress is now constrained by the physical world: by energy, heat and infrastructure. Orbital Industries is tackling those constraints directly, from breakthroughs like its AI-designed cooling fluid, which enables the next generation of GPUs. The ability to discover and deploy these technologies faster than traditional industry will define the next phase of AI and it’s clear there is already strong demand for what the team is building.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Jonathan Godwin, Co-founder & CEO at Orbital Industries, said:
When people imagine a better future, they think about physical things: technologies that give them more freedom, more time, more life. AI will get us there faster. That's what we set out to do at Orbital Industries. Frontier AI gives us PhD-level expertise across every discipline, meaning small, agile teams can move from materials discovery to commercial hardware in a way that simply wasn't possible before, so what used to take a decade, we can now do in months. We're starting with some of the most pressing challenges in data centres, but the scope of what this approach can unlock is much, much bigger. This frames the company’s ambition: use AI-driven simulation and materials discovery to compress the timeline from lab research to deployed hardware.
The bigger picture
Orbital’s raise and technical focus reflect a broader market trend: investment in companies that address the physical constraints of AI compute rather than only model or software improvements. The combination of fluids, modular hardware and simulation aligns with growing demand from cloud providers and enterprises to deploy high-density GPUs safely and quickly.
The deal also signals continued interest from AI investors in startups tackling infrastructure and materials problems at the intersection of hardware and software. For the UK and European ecosystem, firms that bridge advanced simulation, materials science and manufacturing are increasingly visible as routes to capture value from the rising tide of AI compute.
They've invested in Orbital Industries
Get to know these AI investors
| Investors | Investment Focus | Startup Investments | Location | Funding Round | Connect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Plural( ) | Orbital IndustriesCircuitHubRivanAugurCallosum+8 | ||||
 NVentures( ) | Orbital IndustriesOxaSynthesiaPolyAIPhysicsX+3 | ||||
 Radical Ventures( ) | Orbital IndustriesLatent Labs | ||||
 Fly Ventures( ) | Orbital IndustriesxmemoryZendo Energy+1 | ||||
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