Google exploring putting AI data centers in space — Project Suncatcher wants to harness in-orbit solar power to scale AI compute

Google just announced that it’s exploring the idea of putting AI data centers into orbit to take advantage of the sun’s solar output for power. According to Google Research, Project Suncatcher aims to have a constellation of solar-powered satellites with Google TPUs that communicate optically. This would allow the company to run a power-hungry data center without requiring the massive infrastructure needed to build one on land.

Power is currently one of the bottlenecks of the AI infrastructure…