Space data centers? They could be closer than you think

Are orbital data centers the future for a conflict-ridden industry?

Ask Ezra Feilden, co-founder and CTO for startup Starcloud, and you’ll get a more nuanced—and thoughtful—answer than you might expect. Ultimately, it comes down to what makes most sense.

“It’s getting easier to deploy things in space and it’s getting harder to deploy things on the ground,” Feilden said onstage at the Ai4 conference. “There’s a point at which those two lines cross over and it becomes not only faster but more economical to be building large-scale AI infrastructure in space.”

Feilden’s company has big plans to expand the capabilities of space-based data centers. Starcloud already has one H100 in orbit—a test of one GPU for proof of concept—and if things go well, intends to launch a “constellation.”

Can it work? There’s a lot of speculation about the actual potential of orbital data centers—and many naysayers. Critics often point to the infrastructure needs of the technology and carrying capacity for deployment.

Others have pointed to the potential for orbital data centers to add to light pollution. Shane Ross, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, posted a simulation on LinkedIn showing how the satellites, if deployed as proposed, might leave the night sky permanently lit up.

“It stops being satellites and becomes a permanent ring of light,” Ross added on LinkedIn. “The Twilight Zone.”

But defenders note that a sticky political environment, with widespread opposition to the AI infrastructure crossing partisan and ideological lines, mean there’s a need to look outside the box—and potentially off-planet.

Whatever it takes. To Feilden, a kind of let-a-hundred-flowers-bloom approach makes sense. He told the crowd at Ai4 that he welcomes all kinds of alternative data center infrastructure, deployed wherever makes the best sense.

“I’m hugely supportive of underwater data centers, floating data centers…solar plus storage in remote locations…nuclear fusion,” Feilden said. “We need to throw everything we have at it.”

As for Starcloud’s future, the company has big plans for their constellation. But those plans hinge on overcoming challenges in building and deployment.

“We need to be building these satellites as quickly as we build cars—car production lines are producing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, per year,” Feilden said. “We’re designing our satellites to be stamped out like a car, mass-produced where you can really start to capture economies of scale versus terrestrial data centers which are often one-off projects where you have unique challenges each time.”