Orbital Industries
London AI-materials company making PFAS-free GPU cooling and modular datacentres using atomic-simulation AI.
Last refreshed: 29 May 2026
Can a UK deeptech company fix the AI datacentre cooling crisis without UK capital?
Timeline for Orbital Industries
Mentioned in: Balderton leads Geordie's $30m AI round
UK Startups and InnovationClosed $50m Series B with no UK lead investor
UK Startups and Innovation: Orbital's $50m raise has no UK lead- What does Orbital Industries make and who backed their $50m round?
- Orbital Industries makes PFAS-free dielectric cooling fluid and modular datacentres using an AI atomic-simulation engine. Its $50m Series B was led by Plural, with Nvidia's NVentures and an AWS multi-year partnership.Source: Fortune
- Why did Orbital Industries raise $50m with no UK investor leading the round?
- No UK-domiciled fund or sovereign vehicle contributed to the Series B. European firm Plural led, with US investors NVentures, Radical Ventures and Compound co-investing, reflecting a shortage of UK late-stage deeptech capital.Source: Fortune
- What is PFAS-free GPU cooling and why does it matter for datacentres?
- PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are persistent environmental contaminants used in traditional immersion cooling fluids. Orbital's PFAS-free alternative meets tightening EU and US regulations while handling the extreme heat of modern GPU racks.Source: Fortune
- Who founded Orbital Industries and what was their background at DeepMind?
- Jonathan Godwin (CEO) spent five years at Google DeepMind working on AI for materials Science. He co-founded Orbital in 2022 with James Gin-Pollock (CTO) and Daniel Miodovnik (COO).Source: Sifted / Fortune
- How does Orbital Industries' atomic-simulation engine work?
- Orbital's engine models 100,000 atoms on a single GPU at ten times the speed of the nearest alternative, enabling rapid screening of material candidates for properties like heat transfer and chemical stability.Source: Fortune
Background
Orbital Industries closed a $50m Series B on 28 May 2026, led by Plural with Nvidia's NVentures and an AWS multi-year product partnership. The round attracted no UK-domiciled lead, with equity upside flowing to European and American balance sheets — a pointed illustration of the gap between UK innovation and UK capital.
Founded in 2022 (rebranded from Orbital Materials), the company uses a proprietary atomic-simulation engine to screen hundreds of thousands of material candidates on a single GPU at ten times the speed of prior tools. Its flagship product is a PFAS-free dielectric cooling fluid designed for immersion cooling of GPU racks; it also makes modular datacentres deployable within six months. Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Godwin spent five years at Google DeepMind working on AI for materials Science before founding the company alongside CTO James Gin-Pollock and COO Daniel Miodovnik.
Orbital sits at the intersection of two urgent trends: the soaring thermal load of AI compute infrastructure and the global push to eliminate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances from industrial processes. Its AWS partnership signals hardware-to-hyperscaler commercialisation at a point when datacentre cooling is a strategic bottleneck.