Google is boldly going where no web giant has gone before, and along with investment firm Fidelity is pumping a massive $1 billion into Elon Musk’s SpaceX space transportation company. Together, Google and Fidelity now own almost 10 percent of the startup, which already counts four other major investors and is now valued at just over $10 billion.

News of the round was first picked up by The Information on Monday. It said Google’s interest in the company has to do with its satellites, which it wants to use to deliver Internet access to the most inaccesible parts of the globe. Getting more people connected is one of Google’s major goals, and so the investments fits nicely with other investments its been making in the ‘space’.

Musk talked about SpaceX’s satellites in an interview with Bloomberg last week, saying the initiative could deliver Internet access to almost 3 billion people who currently have none, or limited, connectivity to the web. Musk believes that having data sent via satellites will be much faster than sending it over wires. But of course, that’s not the limit of Musk’s ambitions, for he’s also hoping SpaceX can one day build an Internet connection all the way to Mars.

“People should not expect this to be active sooner than five years,” said Musk.

Musk estimates his satellite program will cost around $10 billion in total, so the cash from Google and Fidelity should help to speed things along. And while SpaceX didn’t say exactly what the new cash would be used for, the timing of the announcement and Google’s keen interest in satellites suggests this initiative will surely be one that benefits.

SDN, IoT and analytics

The announcement comes on a busy day for venture capitalist firms in Silicon Valley, which coughed up over $120 million in various other funding initiatives announced in the morning.

In the software-defined networking (SDN) world, Pluribus Networks has raised $50 million in a series D round led by Temasek Holdings, with participation from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Menlo Ventures, Mohr Davidow and AME Cloud Ventures. The startup’s main offering is a distributed bare-metal network hypervisor called Netvisor OS, and the new funds will be used to grow its business development, sales and engineering teams to support growing customer demand.

“By growing marketing and kicking-off channel marketing programs in the regions, we will build brand preference and, therefore, make it easier for the channel to position Pluribus as a differentiated offering versus commodity and legacy vendors,” said Dave Ginsburg, CMO at Pluribus, told Talkin’ Cloud. “Additional engineers will help to better realize the ‘complete product’ that more fully aligns to repeatable SDN use cases that generate real financial returns for CIOs.”

Meanwhile, web media firm Stack Exchange, which runs a network of tech forums and communities including the popular website Stack Overflow, has just grabbed $40 million from venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. The company plans to use the cash to expand its network of knowledge-based sites to rival services like Wikipedia and Quora, providing free answers to technical questions on a wide array of subjects, ranging from programming and cognitive sciences, to gardening and photography.

Investors just can’t stop throwing their money at the Internet of Things either. Bastille, an IoT security startup, is the latest beneficiary, having just pocketed an extra $1 million in funding from David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners and other investors, in addition to the earlier $1.5 million it raised in September of last year. The startup hasn’t yet launched any formal product, but its main focus is on assessing IoT vulnerabilities and detecting breaches in the enterprise. Given how easy it is to hack IoT devices, as hackers recently demonstrated at the BlackHat conference when they hacked the Google-owned Nest thermostat, it’s a safe bet that whatever security solution Bastille does come up with will have plenty of takers.

Last but not least, data analytics startup Interana has just closed on a $20 million Series B round led by Index Ventures, with participation from AME Cloud Ventures, Harris Barton and Cloudera’s Mike Olson. Interana was founded by two ex-Facebook engineers, Bobby Johnson and Lior Abraham, who helped to build the social network’s internal analytics systems. Its main product is a highly specialized data visualization tool that brings Facebook-style event analytics to anyone with lots of event-related data that needs to be analyzed.

At first glance, Interana’s tool appears to be something of a niche product, but company CEO Ann Johnson (wife of Bobby) says it has secured a number of customers, and plenty of interest from “large and well-known companies”.