OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has ridiculed the concept of orbital knowledge centres amid a devoted push by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to energy AI improvement from area. The concept is being explored by Google as effectively, in line with CEO Sundar Pichai, with the search large set to take its first step quickly.
Requested in regards to the feasibility of the concept throughout his go to to New Delhi for the India AI Affect Summit 2026, Altman advised Indian Categorical“Placing knowledge centres in area with the present panorama is ridiculous.”
“Orbital knowledge centres are usually not going to matter at scale this decade as a result of tough math of launch prices and the way exhausting it’s to repair a damaged GPU in area,” the Open AI CEO defined.
Nevertheless, acknowledging that that there would “come a time” for orbital knowledge centres, Altman mentioned, “We’re not there but.”
Musk’s orbital knowledge centre push
Altman’s feedback come at a time when Elon Musk has been vocally pushing for knowledge centres in area.
“The bottom-cost place to place AI can be in area, and that can be true inside two years, possibly three on the newest,” Musk mentioned on the World Financial Discussion board assembly in Davos this January.
Previous to his feedback in January, Musk introduced his ambitions at an all-hands assembly of xAI in December.
In response to a report by Enterprise InsiderMusk mentioned that Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robotic may ultimately man such orbital knowledge centres.
Additional, at an all-hands assembly with xAI workers this month, Musk additionally reportedly mentioned that SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI would enable the corporate to deploy knowledge centres in area sooner.
SpaceX, in the meantime, has mentioned its purpose is to launch a “constellation of 1,000,000 satellites that function as orbital knowledge facilities.”
Enterprise Insider reported that the corporate has already begun hiring engineers for the challenge.
Orbital knowledge centres — a ‘moonshot’
Regardless of Altman’s feedback, Musk is not the one one pondering of orbital knowledge centres.
Google, too, have their eyes on space-based knowledge centres, with CEO Sundar Pichai telling Fox Information in December final that the concept was a “moonshot”.
“At Google, we’re at all times pleased with taking moonshots. One in all our moonshots is: How can we at some point have knowledge facilities in area in order that we are able to higher harness the power from the solar, which is 100 trillion occasions extra power than we produce in all of Earth at the moment?,” Pichai mentioned.
And, in line with the Pichai, Google is only one yr away from starting its journey.
“We’re taking our first step in 2027. We’ll ship tiny, tiny racks of machines, and have them in satellites, take a look at them out, after which begin scaling from there,” Pichai mentioned.
The Google CEO additionally mentioned that regardless of the concept of space-based constructions sounding outlandish now, it will turn into regular quickly sufficient.
“There’s little question to me {that a} decade or so away we’ll be viewing it as a extra regular strategy to construct knowledge facilities,” he mentioned.
Enterprise Insider additionally reported that Google has already been quietly working in the direction of this purpose, a challenge internally referred to as Undertaking Suncatcher.
Orbital knowledge centres are being considered as a strategy to meet the huge power necessities of AI improvement with out the environmental prices of terrestrial knowledge centres.