Khaberni - Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, said on Friday that huge gigawatt-scale data centers will be built in space over the next ten to twenty years, eventually surpassing those on Earth due to the abundance of continuous solar energy.
The number of these massive centers, which include computing infrastructure, is experiencing tremendous growth as the world increasingly uses artificial intelligence and cloud computing, leading to a significant increase in the demand for electricity and water to cool their servers.
Bezos, during a side conversation with John Elkann, chairman of Ferrari and Stellantis, during Italian Technology Week in Turin, said: "One of the things that will happen next—it's hard to know exactly when, it's more than 10 years out, but I bet it won't be more than 20 years—we will start building these massive gigawatt-scale data centers in space," according to Reuters.
The concept of space data centers is gaining increasing momentum among major technology companies, due to the sharp rise in energy needs necessary to maintain these operations on Earth.
Bezos said that these massive clusters for training artificial intelligence "would be better built in space, because we have solar energy there, around the clock, all week long. There are no clouds, no rain, and no storms."
He added: "We will be able to overcome the cost of Earth-based data centers in space within the next two decades."
Bezos saw the shift to orbital infrastructure as part of a broader trend to use space to improve life on Earth.
However, hosting data centers in space has its own challenges, including strenuous maintenance, limited upgradeability, high rocket launch costs, and failed rocket launch attempts.
