Orbital Industries
London AI-materials company making PFAS-free GPU cooling and modular datacentres using atomic-simulation AI.
Orbital Industries is a London AI-materials company making PFAS-free GPU cooling and modular datacentres; its $50m Series B closed on 28 May 2026 with a European lead and no UK investor at all.
Last refreshed: 22 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can a UK deeptech company fix the AI datacentre cooling crisis without UK capital?
Timeline for Orbital Industries
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UK Startups and InnovationBackground
Orbital Industries, founded in 2022 by former Google DeepMind researcher Jonathan Godwin, uses a proprietary atomic-simulation engine to screen material candidates for AI-datacentre hardware. Its flagship product is a PFAS-free dielectric cooling fluid for immersion-cooling GPU racks, alongside modular datacentres it can deploy within six months, positioning it at the intersection of soaring AI compute thermal loads and the push to eliminate PFAS chemicals from industrial processes.
The company closed a $50m Series B on 28 May 2026, led by European fund Plural with Nvidia's venture Arm NVentures joining for the first time, alongside a multi-year AWS product partnership; no UK-domiciled investor took part.
Orbital's round became the first in a run of UK deeptech mega-rounds, PhysicsX and CuspAI among them, to close without domestic capital, exposing a structural gap in Britain's late-stage funding for the AI-materials companies its own research base produces.