‘Ridiculous…we’re not there yet’, says Sam Altman as Elon Musk pushes for orbital data centres, Google eyes 2027 launch
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman teased the idea of orbital data centers during SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s private push to power AI development from space. According to CEO Sundar Pichai, this idea is also being explored by Google and the search giant will take its first step soon.
When asked about the feasibility of this idea during his visit to New Delhi for the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Altman said: Indian Express“Putting data centers in space with the current landscape is ridiculous.”
“Orbital data centers won’t be a big deal this decade because of the rough math of launch costs and how difficult it is to repair a broken GPU in space,” the Open AI CEO said.
But Altman acknowledged that orbital data centers “will come at a time,” adding, “We’re not there yet.”
Musk’s orbital data center move
Altman’s comments come as Elon Musk is loudly pushing for data centers in space.
“The lowest-cost place to deploy AI will be in space, and that will be within two years, maybe three years at the latest,” Musk said at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this January.
Before his comments in January, Musk outlined his goals at a meeting attended by xAI in December.
According to a report prepared by Business ContentTesla’s Optimus humanoid robot could eventually manage such orbital data centers, Musk said.
Additionally, in an extensive meeting with xAI employees this month, Musk reportedly also said that SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI would allow the company to more quickly deploy data centers in space.
SpaceX, meanwhile, said its goal is to launch “a constellation of one million satellites operating as orbital data centers.”
Business Content He reported that the company has started hiring engineers for the project.
Orbital data centers — a ‘moon view’
Despite Altman’s comments, Musk isn’t the only one considering orbital data centers.
According to CEO Sundar Pichai, Google’s eyes are also turned to space-based data centers. Fox News The idea was said to be a “monthly development” last December.
Pichai said, “At Google, we always pride ourselves on taking photos of the moon. One of our photos of the moon is: How can we one day have data centers in space to better utilize the energy from the sun, which is a hundred trillion times more energy than we produce on Earth today?” he said.
And according to Pichai, there is only a year left until Google begins its journey.
“We’re taking our first step in 2027. We’ll ship racks of tiny machines, put them on satellites, test them, and start scaling from there,” Pichai said.
The Google CEO also said that although the idea of space-based structures may sound strange right now, it will soon become normal.
“There’s no doubt that in a decade or so we’ll see this as a more normal way of building data centres,” he said.
Business Content He also reported that Google was quietly working towards this goal, a project known internally as Project Suncatcher.
Orbital data centers are seen as a way to meet the massive energy requirements of AI development without the environmental costs of terrestrial data centers.
