"Tech billionaires have been obsessed with space for a long time. Now, as the largest AI companies race to build more data centers in a frenzied pursuit of profitability, space is looking less like a pet project and more like a commercial opportunity. In 2025 alone, six proposals for giant AI data centers needing multiple gigawatts of power - a capacity only rumored of in 2024 - have been announced. Earthlings are catching on to the fact that power-hungry data centers take up land and water, while providing few jobs, too much pollution, and rising electricity costs."
"Hence the idea to put the data centers in orbit around the Earth, not on the Earth. Space-based data centers - in the form of satellites with solar panels - are Big Tech's latest fad and Silicon Valley's newest investable venture. In space, they theorize, the sun's unlimited rays could provide endless amounts of energy to power your latest AI-generated Sora video. But it's not likely to be that easy."
"Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO and current CEO of startup Relativity Space), have all recently expanded the focus of their rocket companies to include space data centers. Startups exclusively focused on this idea, like the US-based Aetherflux, have laid out deployment plans. Others have snagged partnerships with big names, like Planet's partnership with Google and Nvidia's backing of Starcloud, which launched a satellite containing H100 GPUs in November as part of the latest SpaceX mission. Earlier this year, China launched a dozen supercomputer satellites that can process data in space. Europe wants in on the action too - one European think tank called space data centers the"
Tech billionaires and major AI firms are shifting attention toward orbital data centers to address land, water, and power constraints on Earth. Several proposals for gigawatt-scale AI data centers were announced in 2025, reflecting rapid demand for energy and space. Space-based data centers envision satellites with solar panels supplying vast solar energy to power intensive AI workloads. High-profile founders and companies, along with startups, have repositioned rocket and satellite programs to pursue these systems, and partnerships between cloud and space firms have already launched GPU-equipped satellites. China and European entities are also developing in-space processing capabilities, though practical challenges remain.
Read at The Verge
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