The Future of AI Is… 400 Miles Up?

Google is “working backward from” a future where the “best place to scale AI computers” is not in a sprawling complex in Texas, but in a compact constellation of satellites 400 miles above the Earth. This is the vision of “Project Suncatcher.”
This ambitious plan, outlined in research released Tuesday, would “minimize impact on terrestrial resources” like land and water, which are currently consumed in vast quantities by datacenters. It’s a solution to the $3 trillion terrestrial expansion and its “rising concern” about carbon emissions.
The technology to enable this future involves Google’s custom AI chips (TPUs) placed on satellites powered by solar panels that are 8-times more productive in orbit. Data would be beamed between satellites and back to Earth using “free-space optical links,” or lasers.
This “moonshot” is becoming economically plausible as rocket launch costs “are falling so quickly.” Google projects that by the mid-2030s, the running costs of an orbital datacentre could be “comparable to one on Earth.”
While the first prototypes won’t fly until 2027, and “significant engineering challenges remain,” Google’s announcement signals a major new direction. It joins competitors like Elon Musk and Nvidia in betting that the future of high-performance computing is, quite literally, out of this world.