Space-based data centers or orbital AI infrastructure are proposed concepts to build AI data centers in the sun-synchronous orbit or other orbits utilizing space-based solar power. Electric power has become the main bottleneck for terrestrial AI infrastructure.
Space-based edge computing has historical roots in military architectures designed to bypass the latency of ground-based targeting networks. In the 1980s, the Strategic Defense Initiative's Brilliant Pebbles program first envisioned autonomous on-orbit data processing for missile defense. In 2019, the Space Development Agency (SDA) begin to revive this decentralized approach through its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). This ambitious "sensor-to-shooter" infrastructure is treated as a prerequisite for the modern Golden Dome program, which would rely on space-based data processing to continuously track targets.
Early thinking about space-based computing infrastructure grew out of mid-20th-century visions for large orbital industrial systems, most notably proposals for space-based solar power, which were popularized in both technical literature and science writing by figures such as Isaac Asimov in the 1940s. These ideas emphasized exploiting the vacuum, continuous solar energy, and thermal characteristics of space to support power-intensive activities that would be difficult or inefficient on Earth.
In the 21st century, advances in small satellites, reusable launch vehicles, and high-performance computing revived interest in space-based data centers, with governments and private companies exploring orbital or near-space platforms for edge computing, secure data handling, and low-latency processing of Earth-observation data.
In September 2024, Y Combinator-backed Starcloud released a white paper detailing plans to build multiple gigawatts of AI compute in orbit. It was the first widely cited proposal to actually start building large orbital data centers.
On 27 October 2025, Nature Electronics published a peer-reviewed research perspective , entitled The development of carbon-neutral data centres in space, led by Prof. Yonggang Wen at Nanyang Technological University Singapore and his collaborators.
In 2025, Starcloud deployed an NVIDIA H100-class system and became the first company to train an LLM in space and run a version of Google Gemini in space.
In January 2026, SpaceX filed plans with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for millions of satellites, leveraging reusable launches and Starlink integration to extend cloud and AI computing into orbit. Around the same time, Blue Origin announced the TeraWave constellation of about 5,400 satellites, designed to provide highâÂÂthroughput networking for data centers, enterprise, and government customers. Meanwhile, China announced a 200,000âÂÂsatellite constellation, focusing on state coordination, data sovereignty, and in-orbit processing for secure, time-critical applications.
On February 3rd, 2026, Starcloud submitted a proposal to the FCC for a constellation of up to 88,000 satellites for orbital data centers.
On March 7th, 2026, Starcloud announced that it intended to be the first to mine Bitcoin in space, flying bitcoin mining ASICs on its second satellite, Starcloud-2.
On March 30th, 2026, Starcloud announced that it had raised a $170M Series A at a $1.1bn valuation led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures, making Starcloud the fastest unicorn in Y Combinator history just 17 months after completing the program.
In November 2025, Google published a feasibility study on space-based data centers. The authors argued that if launch costs to low earth orbit reached US$200/kg, the launch cost for data center satellites could be cost effective relative to current energy costs for ground-based data centers. They project this may occur around 2035 if SpaceX's Starship project scales to 180 launches/year by then.
The deployment of space-based data centers raises several technical, economic, and environmental concerns.
It would take ~1 square mile solar array in earth orbit to produce 1 gigawatt of power at 30% cell efficiency.