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Dr. Leon Alkalai

Dr. Leon Alkalai is a 32-year veteran of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he served as capture lead for the GRAIL lunar mission and received the NASA Distinguished Individual Achievement Medal in 2011 and 2019. Following his JPL tenure, he founded Mandala Space Ventures, a deep-tech incubator and venture fund backing aerospace companies including Anduril, Stoke Space, and Varda.

In 2023 he founded Sophia Space, an orbital edge computing company developing modular, solar-powered, passively cooled space-based data centers, which closed a $10M seed round and was awarded a patent with Caltech for space-based data center architecture in July 2026.

American · 1 current role · 1 founding

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Physical AI footprint (1)

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  • Sophia Spaceverified→
    Founder

    Pioneer in [Modular](/companies/modrobotics), solar-powered, passively cooled, AI-optimized orbital computing technology.

    $10M raised1 model

Current roles (1)

Foundings (1)

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Co-founders (1)

Sources (4)

  1. https://sophia.space/news/sophia-space-closes-10m-seed-round-to-accelerate-orbital-edge-computing
  2. Los Angeles Times · https://www.latimes.com/b2b/business-visionaries/aerospace-defense/leon-alkalai
  3. Mandala Space Ventures · https://mandalaspaceventures.com/news/sophia-space-caltech-patent-space-based-data-centers
  4. Hogan Lovells · https://www.hlc.com/en/news/hogan-lovells-advises-sophia-space-as-it-closes

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