Jensen Huang says orbital datacenters face major hurdles despite space's abundant energy

Jensen Huang Says Elon Musk's GPUs‑in‑Space Idea Isn't Crazy -- But 3 Huge Barriers Remain

Nvidia just delivered one of the biggest quarters in tech history. The chipmaker reported $68 billion in revenue, up 73 percent year over year, a staggering figure that underscores just how integral its GPUs have become to the artificial intelligence boom. As cloud providers and startups alike race to build AI models, Nvidia has positioned itself at the center of the arms race. But during the Nvidia earnings call, CEO Jensen Huang looked beyond the blowout numbers. Instead of dwelling solely on record demand, he turned to a more speculative question asked by an attendee on the call: what happens when Earth itself becomes the bottleneck? As AI workloads surge, terrestrial data centers are running up against real-world constraints, including power grid limitations, land scarcity, and the immense cooling requirements of dense GPU clusters. Those pressures have pushed a once-fringe idea into more serious industry discussion: moving compute into orbit.

Jensen Huang Thinks Orbital Datacenters Have Poor Economics Right Now, Says Cooling Is The Bottleneck - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang shared his views on orbital data centers during the chipmaker's Q4 earnings call, outlining economic challenges associated with the phenomenon. Poor Economics, Abundance Of Energy During the company's earnings call with investors and analysts, Huang was asked about his views on space-based AI compute. "The economics are poor today, but it is going to improve over time," he said. He also added that space had an "abundance of energy" and "plenty of space" in orbit, outlining positive factors in the race for solar-powered AI satellites. However, he acknowledged that there was no airflow in space, which means that "the only way to dissipate heat is through conduction," he said. He added that radiators needed for the heat dissipation were "fairly large." Space-based hardware isn't novel for the chipmaker. "MPS is already the world's first GPU in space, Hopper is in space," Huang said. Gene Munster Weighs In Investor Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management took Huang's comments as a positive signal for the future of AI datacenters in space. In a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday, Munster summarized Huang's views on the topic. "My take: Jensen message is orbital data centers are difficult today and worth pursuing," the investor said in the post. Nvidia's Earnings The chipmaker posted record revenue figures in Q4, reporting $68.13 billion, up 73% from last year's fourth quarter and beating the Street consensus of $66 billion. Nvidia's EPS earnings of $1.62 also beat market estimates of $1.53 per share. Elon Musk's Goal Benzinga Edge Rankings show that Nvidia scores well on the Momentum, Growth and Quality metrics. It also boasts a positive price trend in the short, medium, and long term. Price Action: NVDA surged 1.41% to $195.56 at Market close on Wednesday. Check out more of Benzinga's Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link. Photo courtesy: jamesonwu1972 On Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.