China Plans Space-Based AI Data Centers, Challenging SpaceX in Race for Orbital Computing

China plans space‑based AI data centres, challenging Musk's SpaceX ambitions

BEIJING, Jan 29 (Reuters) - China plans to launch space‑based artificial intelligence data centres over the next five years, state media reported on Thursday, a challenge to Elon Musk's plan to deploy SpaceX data centres to the heavens. China's main space contractor, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), vowed to "construct gigawatt-class space digital-intelligence infrastructure," according to a five-year development plan that was cited by state broadcaster CCTV. The new space data centres will "integrate cloud, edge and terminal (device) capabilities" and achieve the "deep integration of computing power, storage capacity and transmission bandwidth," enabling data from Earth to be processed in space, the report said. U.S. firm SpaceX expects to use funds from its planned $25 billion blockbuster IPO this year to develop orbital AI data centres in response to terrestrial energy constraints. SpaceX plans to launch solar‑powered AI data center satellites within the next two to three years, Musk said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. "It's a no-brainer building solar-power data centers in space ... the lowest-cost place to put AI will be space and that will be true within two years, three at the latest," Musk said. He said solar generation in orbit can produce five times more power than panels on the ground. China also plans to shift the energy-intensive burden of AI processing into orbit, utilising "gigawatt-class" solar-powered hubs to create an industrial-scale "Space Cloud" by 2030, according to a December CASC policy document. The document identifies the integration of space-based solar power with AI computing as a core pillar of the upcoming 15th Five Year Plan, China's economic development roadmap. The CASC plan also vowed to "achieve the flight operation of suborbital space tourism and gradually develop orbital space tourism" in the next five years, CCTV reported. China and the U.S. are competing as they look to turn space exploration into a commercially viable business similar to civil aviation, as well as becoming the first to exploit the military and strategic advantages of space dominance. CASC has vowed to transform China into a "world-leading space power" by 2045. But Beijing's key bottleneck so far is its failure to complete a reusable rocket test. U.S. rival SpaceX's Falcon 9 reusable rocket has allowed its subsidiary Starlink to achieve a near-monopoly on low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and it is also used for orbital space tourism. Reusability is crucial to lowering the costs of rocket launches and making it cheaper to send satellites into space. China achieved a record 93 space launches last year, according to official announcements, buoyed by its rapidly maturing commercial spaceflight startups. CASC's plans were announced after China inaugurated its first School of Interstellar Navigation housed in the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, aiming to foster the next generation of space talent in frontier fields including interstellar propulsion and deep space navigation. The new institution signals China's ambitions to strategically transition from near-Earth orbit operations to deep space exploration. "The next 10 to 20 years will be a window for leapfrog development in China's interstellar navigation field. Original innovation in basic research and technological breakthroughs will reshape the pattern of deep space exploration," Xinhua wrote on the inauguration. The U.S. faces intense competition this decade from China in its effort to return astronauts to the moon, where no humans have gone since the final U.S. Apollo mission in 1972. Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Jamie Freed and Thomas Derpinghaus Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Science Laurie Chen Thomson Reuters Laurie Chen is a China Correspondent at Reuters' Beijing bureau, covering politics and general news. Before joining Reuters, she reported on China for six years at Agence France-Presse and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. She speaks fluent Mandarin.

Why does Elon Musk want to put AI data centers in space?

WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - A proposed merger between Elon Musk's SpaceX and xAI, reported exclusively by Reuters on Thursday, could give fresh momentum to Musk's plan to launch satellite data centers into orbit as he battles for supremacy in the rapidly escalating AI race against tech giants like Alphabet's Google, Meta and OpenAI. Here is what we know about space-based AI computing: WHAT ARE SPACE-BASED AI DATA CENTERS? Space-based data centers - still an early-stage concept - would likely rely on hundreds of solar-powered satellites networked in orbit to handle the enormous computing demands of AI systems like xAI's Grok or OpenAI's ChatGPT, at a time when energy-hungry Earth-based facilities are becoming increasingly costly to run. Advocates say operating above the atmosphere offers nearly constant solar power and eliminates the cooling burdens that dominate ground-based data-center costs, potentially making AI processing far more efficient. But engineers and space specialists caution that commercial viability remains years away, citing major risks from space debris, defending hardware against cosmic radiation, limited options for in-person maintenance, and launch costs. Deutsche Bank expects the first small-scale orbital data-center deployments in 2027-28 to test both the technology and the economics, with wider constellations -- potentially scaling into the hundreds or thousands-- emerging only in the 2030s if those early missions work. WHY DOES MUSK WANT TO DO THIS? SpaceX is the most successful rocket-maker in history and has successfully launched thousands of satellites into orbit as part of its Starlink internet service. If space-based AI computing is the future, SpaceX is the most ideally placed to operate AI-ready satellite clusters or facilitate the setting up of on-orbit computing. "It's a no-brainer building solar-power data centers in space ... the lowest-cost place to put AI will be space, and that will be true within two years, three at the latest," Musk said at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this month. SpaceX is considering an initial public offering this year that could value the rocket and satellite company at over $1 trillion, Reuters has reported. Part of the proceeds would go to funding the development of AI data center satellites, sources say. WHAT ARE MUSK'S COMPETITORS DOING? Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has been working on technology for AI data centers in space, building on the Amazon founder's prediction that "giant gigawatt data centers" in orbit could beat the cost of their Earth-bound peers within 10 to 20 years by tapping uninterrupted solar power and radiating heat directly into space. Nvidia-backed Starcloud has already offered a glimpse of that future: its Starcloud-1 satellite, launched on a Falcon 9 last month, carries an Nvidia H100 - the most powerful AI chip ever placed in orbit - and is training and running Google's open-source Gemma model as a proof of concept. The company ultimately envisions a modular "hypercluster" of satellites providing about five gigawatts of computing power, comparable to several hyperscale data centers combined. Google is pushing the space-based data center idea with Project Suncatcher, a research effort to network solar-powered satellites equipped with its Tensor Processing Units into an orbital AI cloud. The company plans an initial prototype launch with partner Planet Labs around 2027. China also plans to create a "Space Cloud" by launching space-based artificial intelligence data centers over the next five years, state media reported on Thursday. China's main space contractor, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, vowed to "construct gigawatt-class space digital-intelligence infrastructure," according to a five-year development plan. (Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington; Additional reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Joe Brock and Matthew Lewis)