The largest orbital computing cluster is now open for business.

Despite all the hype about data centers in space, there aren’t that many GPUs out there. As this change begins, the near-term business of orbital computing begins to take shape.

The largest computing cluster currently in orbit was launched by Canada’s Kepler Communications last January and boasts about 40 Nvidia Orin edge processors aboard 10 operational satellites, all connected by laser communications links.

The company currently has 18 customers and on Monday announced Sophia Space, a startup that will test software for a unique orbital computer aboard the Kepler constellation.

Experts don’t expect to see large-scale data centers like those envisioned by SpaceX or Blue Origin until the 2030s. The first step is to process data collected from orbit to improve the performance of space-based sensors used by private companies and government agencies.

Kepler does not consider itself a data center company but rather an infrastructure for space applications, CEO Mina Mistry told TechCrunch. We want to be the layer that provides network services to other satellites in space or to drones and aircraft below the sky.

Sophia, on the other hand, is developing a passively cooled space computer that could solve one of the key challenges of large-scale data centers in orbit. The goal is to prevent powerful processors from overheating without having to build and ship heavy and expensive active cooling systems.

Through the new partnership, Sophia will upload its own operating system to one of Kepler’s satellites and attempt to run and configure it across the six GPUs of both spacecraft. This kind of activity is table stakes in terrestrial data centers, and this is the first time it is being attempted in orbit. Ensuring that the software works in orbit will be a major de-risking exercise for Sophia ahead of its planned launch of its first satellite in late 2027.

For Kepler, partnerships help prove the usefulness of the network. It is currently transporting and processing data uploaded from the ground or collected via payloads hosted on its own spacecraft. However, as the field matures, the company expects to begin connecting with third-party satellites to provide networking and processing services.

Mistry says satellite companies are now planning future assets around this model, pointing out the benefits of offloading processing to more power-hungry sensors, such as synthetic aperture radar. The US military is a major customer of this work, developing new missile defense systems based on satellites to detect and track threats. Kepler has already demonstrated a space-to-air laser link in a demonstration for the U.S. government.

This kind of edge processing, processing collected data for faster responsiveness, is where orbital data centers will initially prove their worth. This vision sets Sophia and Kepler apart from established space companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin or startups like Starcloud and Aetherflux that are raising significant capital to focus on large-scale data centers with data center-style processors.

“We believe we are closer to inference than training, so we want to have more distributed GPUs doing inference rather than one super powerful GPU with training workload capacity,” Mistry told TechCrunch. “If it’s consuming kilowatts of power and only running 10% of the time, it doesn’t help much. In our case, the GPU is running 100% of the time.”

And once these technologies are proven in orbit, anything can happen. Sophia CEO Rob DeMillo points out that Wisconsin last week adopted a ban on data center construction, something some members of Congress are also pushing for. In their eyes, anything that limits data centers on Earth makes space-based alternatives more attractive.

“There are no data centers in this country anymore,” Demillo thought. “I think it’s going to get weird from here.”