Elon Musk believes the future of artificial intelligence will not be limited to Earth. The SpaceX chief has predicted that almost all computing power needed for what he called ‘future superintelligence’ will eventually be based in space.
He even clarified that by “overwhelmingly”, he means a figure that would round up to 100 per cent. Well, it is a big prediction, but the idea of moving AI data centres into orbit is already being explored by major tech and space companies.Musk made the remark on an X post while responding to investor Shaun Maguire and another account discussing SpaceX's computing business.
Maguire believes SpaceX could become a low-cost provider of computing power, initially through data centres on Earth and eventually through orbital infrastructure. Musk, however, took the idea a step further, saying that future superintelligence compute would be almost entirely in space.
He did not explain when this shift could happen or how the company plans to achieve it.Google has already tested AI computing in spaceWe can see that there is some real progress behind the idea. Such as, Google is working on Project Suncatcher, a research project that aims to build AI computing infrastructure using solar-powered satellites equipped with its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs).
The company launched its first prototype satellite on October 1, in partnership with Planet. On October 30, Google announced that it had successfully received its first AI-generated response from a data centre-class TPU operating in orbit.
The satellite ran Google's Gemma 4 model, marking an important early test. Google plans to test two interconnected satellites in 2027.Coming back to SpaceX, it is also working towards orbital computing.
According to a Reuters report, the company is aiming to demonstrate its space-based AI computing technology by late 2027, with deployments potentially beginning as early as 2028. SpaceX has also sought regulatory approval for a constellation of up to one million satellites that could function as data centres.
However, these are ambitious plans, not an operational network yet. But there is one big problem: money.
Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's global head of data centre energy, has admitted that building data centres in space is not economically feasible at present. Speaking at The Information's Women in Tech, Media and Finance Summit 2026, she said space data centres are “incredibly, incredibly expensive, up to 100 times more expensive than building on Earth”.
Her advice was to “explore all the terrestrial options before you go extraterrestrial”.Space could offer access to near-constant sunlight in suitable orbits, potentially helping power energy-hungry AI systems. But with ambition come challenges -- launching hardware, protecting chips from radiation, managing extreme temperatures and maintaining satellites would be difficult and, importantly expensive.- Ends