Starcloud launches AI satellite in November for data center in space
You know where data centers for AI are now being moved? To space. Startup Starcloud, participant in NVIDIA Inception program, plans to launch in November a satellite with AI into Earth orbit. And this is only the beginning of their ambitious plan to solve problems of energy consumption and cooling of data centers on Earth.
Philip Johnston, co-founder and CEO of the startup, explains: in space you get almost unlimited renewable energy at low cost.
The Starcloud-1 satellite weighing 60 kg, the size of a small refrigerator, is expected to offer 100 times more powerful GPU computing than any previous space operation.
Starcloud’s space data centers can use the vacuum of deep space as an infinite heat sink. And radiating waste heat into space through infrared radiation can save significant water resources on Earth. Constant sun exposure in orbit also means almost infinite solar energy. No batteries or backup power needed.
According to Starcloud’s forecasts, energy costs in space will be 10 times cheaper than ground-based options, even accounting for launch costs.
Starcloud plans to build an orbital data center with 5 gigawatts of power with oversized solar panels and cooling panels. About 4 km wide and long. There’s your future of computing infrastructure – not on Earth, but above it.