Putting AI compute in space remains a daunting challenge, but Google appears to believe that SpaceX can pull it off
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According to the report, Google is in talks with SpaceX and a few other contenders about this strategy, though given how Elon Musk's orbital enterprise has steadily become by far the main player in commercial launches, it's the clear front-runner in those talks. Google's move may be related to the company's Project Suncatcher initiative, revealed last November, that intends to send satellites laden with Google Tensor Processing Units (AI chips) into orbit starting in 2027.
This news has the potential to boost the impending SpaceX IPO to infinity and beyond. That offering is expected to be the largest of all time, and was already expected to reach stratospheric levels of $1.5 to $1.7 trillion . As of this writing, neither company has offered any comment on the presumably ongoing negotiations.
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It's worth noting that SpaceX recently struck a partnership with Anthropic that could include "multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity", and that it filed an application last January with the FCC to launch up to a million satellites for datacenters, so SpaceX would doubtless be happy for another client in this space.
The notion of space AI datacenters has long been derided as a fever dream , even by OpenAI honcho Sam Altman himself, given the financial delta-V required to place thinking rocks in orbit. Estimates pin the theoretical launch cost for SpaceX itself at around $2,700 per kilogram, an amount that works out to a best-case scenario of $3,400/kg for a customer, assuming a completely stuffed rocket — something that's hard to achieve in practice.
That reason is precisely why SpaceX's February 2026 price table lists $7,000/kg as a standard rideshare price, to fill in the gaps and maximize profit during a launch (or minimize losses, depending on how you slice it).
The math for Google's Project Suncatcher says that the financial equilibrium for space datacenters sits at around the $200/kg mark, not even in the same galaxy as current figures . Yet the economics of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets are driving that cost down. One such Falcon 9 recently launched for the 34th time in a row , and some analysts think it's literally a matter of space-time until five to six reuses of the same ship are enough to offset its production cost. After that, in theory, the only major expenses are fuel, maintenance, and launchpad utilization.
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/google-reportedly-in-talks-with-spacex-to-launch-its-orbital-data-centers-partnership-could-mark-a-historic-turning-point-and-boost-upcoming-ipo#main
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