Google is reportedly considering working with SpaceX on orbital data centers
Key takeaways
- Sundry Photography/Getty Images Google is in negotiations with Space X to secure the company's help in its own nascent effort to put orbital data centers in space, reports The Wall Street Journal.
- Project Suncatcher, the moonshot Google announced to explore the feasibility of space-based data centers, actually predates Space X's own foray.
- Both Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk have presented orbital data centers as an inevitability.
Sundry Photography/Getty Images Google is in negotiations with Space X to secure the company's help in its own nascent effort to put orbital data centers in space, reports The Wall Street Journal. If the two sides were to reach a deal, it would see two competitors working together.
Project Suncatcher, the moonshot Google announced to explore the feasibility of space-based data centers, actually predates Space X's own foray. Google shared news of Suncatcher last November, while Elon Musk announced that SpaceX and xAI were merging — with the intent of launching 1 million orbital data satellites — this past February. According to the Journal, Google is also in discussions with other rocket-launch companies. The search giant is already working with Planet Labs to design and build the satellites it plans to put into space.
Both Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk have presented orbital data centers as an inevitability. "There's no doubt to me that a decade or so away, we'll be viewing it as a more normal way to build data centers," Pichai told Fox News in an interview in November. Musk, in his announcement of the SpaceX and xAI merger, meanwhile said that within three years satellites would be the cheapest way to generate AI compute power.