Tech firms are floating the idea of building data centers in space and tapping into the sun's energy to meet out-of-this-world power demands in a fierce artificial intelligence race.

US startup Starcloud this week sent a refrigerator-sized satellite containing an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) into orbit in what the AI chip maker touted as a "cosmic debut" for the mini-data center.

"The idea is that it will soon make much more sense to build data centers in space than it does to build them on Earth," Starcloud chief executive Philip Johnston said at a recent tech conference in Riyadh.

Along with a constant supply of solar energy, data centers are easier to cool in space, advocates note.

Announcements have come thick and fast, the latest being Google this week unveiling plans to

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