Philip Johnston

Philip Johnston is Co-Founder and CEO of Starcloud, which builds data centers in space to address the AI energy bottleneck. Starcloud recently became the first entity to launch and operate an Nvidia H100 GPU (AI chip) in space, 100x more powerful GPU compute than has been on orbit before. Starcloud was also recently the first entity to train an LLM in space and to run a version of Gemini in space. In March 2026, Starcloud raised a $170M Series A at a $1.1Bn valuation led by Benchmark, becoming Y Combinator's fastest unicorn just 17 months after completing the program. Philip is a second-time founder who previously spent time at McKinsey and Company working with national space agencies. He has an MPA in National Security and Technology from Harvard University, an MBA from Wharton, an MA in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University, and he is a CFA Charterholder.