The growth of the U.S. economy is being fueled by the hectic quest to build out massive data centers to run increasingly popular generative AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini. The power-hungry AI data centers are driving up electricity costs in some regions and sparking local "not-in-my-backyard" opposition.

Consequently, some Big Tech players are looking to locate their data centers in space. They think that low earth orbit could mitigate the problem of pesky, annoyed neighbors and offer perpetual sunshine to power constellations of AI satellites.

In November, Google unveiled Project Suncatcher, "a research moonshot to scale machine learning compute in space." A team of Google researchers is exploring how to deploy and fly fleets of solar-powered AI satellites that would b

See Full Page