Google’s “moonshot” aspirations to expand its AI footprint are taking on a more literal meaning.
CEO Sundar Pichai said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday that Google will soon start building AI data centers in space. The tech giant announced Project Suncatcher earlier this month, in this case with the goal of finding more efficient ways to power energy-guzzling centers with solar power.
“One of our moonshots is, how can we one day put data centers in space so that we can better replicate the energy from the sun that’s 100 trillion times more energy than we produce on Earth today?” Pichai said.
Google will take the first step toward building extraterrestrial data centers in early 2027 in partnership with satellite imagery firm Planet, launching two pilot satellites to test hardware in Earth orbit. According to Pichai, space-based data centers will be the new norm in the near future.
“But I have no doubt that in a decade or so we will see this as a common way to build data centers,” he said.
Data center space race
To be sure, Google isn’t the only company looking to the sky for answers to improving data center efficiency. Earlier this month, Y Combinator and Nvidia-backed startup StarCloud sent their first AI-equipped satellite into space. CEO and cofounder Philip Johnston predicts that extraterrestrial data centers will emit 10 times less carbon than their counterparts on Earth, taking into account emissions from launch.
While the cost of satellites used to test AI hardware in space has fallen dramatically, putting the development of extraterrestrial data centers within reach, the cost of building these solar power centers is still unknown, especially since data centers on Earth are expected to require more than $5 trillion in capital expenditures by 2030, according to an April McKinsey report.
Google, which has returned to the AI front-runner conversation with the recent release of Gemini 3, is one of several major hyperscalers pouring money into data centers to expand its computing capabilities. Google itself announced this month a $40 billion investment in building a data center in Texas.
All the while, the speculation of an AI bubble threatens to create an oversupply of data centers, which could lead to dangerous overinvestment in the data center space race.
“The stakes are high,” the McKinsey report said. “Overinvesting in data center infrastructure risks being trapped in assets, while underinvesting means falling behind.”
The use of solar energy to power data centers has become increasingly attractive amid growing concerns about the sustainability of expanding AI computing that requires ever-increasing amounts of power. A December 2024 US Department of Energy report on domestic data center usage found that data center loads have tripled over the past 10 years and could double or triple by 2028. These data centers consumed more than 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023 and are projected to consume up to 12% of US electricity by 2028.
Google alone has more than doubled its electricity consumption in data center use over the past five years, using 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity last year compared to 14.4 million in 2020, when it began specifically tracking data center energy consumption, according to its latest sustainability report released in June.
Google has worked to reduce the energy needed to power its growing data centers, reporting that it will reduce its data center energy emissions by 12% by 2024. However, concerns remain about the long-term sustainability of data center expansion.
“We still don’t know much about the environmental impact of AI, but the few data we have are concerning,” Golestan Radwan, chief digital officer at the United Nations Environment Program, said in a statement last year after the program’s note warning about the environmental impact of expanding AI infrastructure. “We need to make sure the net impact of AI on the planet is positive before we deploy the technology at scale.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
