Why is Elon Musk interested in putting AI data centers into space?

Musk's plans to launch satellite data centres into orbit could be given a boost by a proposed merger between Elon Musk's SpaceX, and xAI. The news was reported exclusively on Thursday. Musk is battling for supremacy against tech giants such as Alphabet's Google and OpenAI.

What we know about AI space computing

What are space-based AI data centers?

The concept of space-based data centres is still in its early stages. They would likely rely upon hundreds of satellites powered by solar energy, networked together in orbit, to meet the computing needs of AI systems such as xAI’s Grok and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This would be at a time where Earth-based facilities that are energy-intensive become more expensive to operate. The advocates say that operating above the atmosphere provides nearly constant solar energy and eliminates the cooling costs associated with ground-based data centers, making AI processing more efficient.

Engineers and space experts warn that commercial viability is still years away. They cite'major risks from debris in space, the need to protect hardware against cosmic radiation and launch costs. Deutsche Bank anticipates that the first small-scale deployments of orbital data centers in 2027-2028 will?test the technology and economics. Larger constellations -- possibly scaling up to hundreds or thousands -- may only emerge in the 2030s, if these early missions succeed.

Why does MUSK want to do this?

SpaceX has launched thousands of satellites in orbit with its Starlink internet services. It is the most successful rocket maker in history. SpaceX is best placed to run AI-ready satellites clusters and facilitate on-orbit computing if'space-based AI computing' is the future. Musk stated that it was a "no-brainer" to build solar-powered data centers in orbit.

SpaceX may consider an initial public offering in 2019, which could be worth over $1 trillion. Sources say that a portion of the proceeds will go towards funding "the development of AI satellite data centers".

What are MUSK's competitors doing?

Jeff Bezos, of Blue Origin, has been developing technology for AI data centres in space. This builds on Bezos’ prediction that "giant Gigawatt datacenters" in orbit can?beat the costs of their Earthbound counterparts within 10-20 years by utilizing uninterrupted solar power and radiating heat directly into space.

Nvidia's Starcloud has already shown a glimpse into the future. Its Starcloud-1 satellite launched last month on a Falcon 9 carries an Nvidia H100, which is the most powerful AI processor ever placed in space. The Starcloud-1 is currently training and running Google’s open-source Gemma as a proof-of-concept. The company envisions a modular "hypercluster", or group of satellites, that can provide computing power equivalent to multiple hyperscale data centres.

Google has been pushing the idea of a space-based datacenter with Project Suncatcher. This is a research project that aims to connect solar-powered satellites with Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) into an AI cloud in orbit. The company is planning to launch an initial prototype with Planet Labs in 2027.

China plans to launch space-based artificial intelligent data centers in the next five year, according to state media. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC), China's largest space contractor, has pledged to "construct gigawatt class space digital intelligence infrastructure" according to a 5-year development plan. (Reporting from Washington by Joey Roulette; Additional reporting in Bengaluru by Akash Sriram; Editing by Joe Brock, Matthew Lewis and Matthew Lewis).

(source: Reuters)