WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
Solar power generated in space and beamed back to Earth is much more efficient than terrestrial plants, but also expensive, complex, and hard to do.
Love the Exponential Future? Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, read about exponential tech and trends, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog.
Cathie Wood‘s ARK Invest is highlighting orbital AI data centers as a necessary solution to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry’s immense energy demands, identifying Elon Musk-led SpaceX‘s Starship as the “critical” technology to make it viable. The focus on space comes as tech giants, including Alphabet, Nvidia, and SpaceX, actively explore orbital computing to bypass a terrestrial “power bottleneck” that is stalling AI’s growth.
In a recent research newsletter, ARK analysts identified power as the “major bottleneck to scaling AI infrastructure.”
The firm cited Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s admission that some GPUs are idle due to limited electricity and noted that backlogs for essential gas turbines are roughly seven years long. A 25 – 30% projected leap in power demand over the coming decade, with AI-driven data centers, is becoming a dominant force, now inspiring innovation not only in power sourcing but also radically new infrastructure strategies.
To bypass these limits, hyperscalers are “turning to space for always-on power to sustain AI growth.”
The strategy involves sun-synchronous satellites that can draw on “near-continuous solar power” and link via lasers, creating what ARK calls a “global, distributed, always-on compute layer.”
Recent initiatives, such as Alphabet’s “Project Suncatcher” and Nvidia’s partnership with Starcloud, underscore this shift, but Orbital Data Centers hinge on launch costs.
According to ARK, this concept hinges on launch costs. While “prohibitively high” in the past, the firm states that SpaceX’s Starship “should change the game” by dropping the cost of launching a kg of product into orbit from today’s $1,200 per kg to just $200 when it becomes fully operational, which is expected to be around 2026.
The research points to Musk’s suggestion that Starship could eventually “deliver 100 GW per year to high earth orbit” within five years – and that using the Moon as a launch site for space based solar power stations we could see that figure leap to 100Tw per year – both figures that would revolutionize the energy available for computation.
