Google is reportedly considering working with SpaceX on orbital data centers

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Google is in negotiations with SpaceX to secure the company's help in its own nascent effort to put orbital data centers in space, reports The Wall Street Journal. If the two sides were to reach a deal, it would see two competitors working together.

Project Suncatcher, the moonshot Google announced to explore the feasibility of space-based data centers, actually predates SpaceX's own foray. Google shared news of Suncatcher last November, while Elon Musk announced that SpaceX and xAI were merging — with the intent of launching 1 million orbital data satellites — this past February. According to the Journal, Google is also in discussions with other rocket-launch companies. The search giant is already working with Planet Labs to design and build the satellites it plans to put into space.

Both Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk have presented orbital data centers as an inevitability. "There's no doubt to me that a decade or so away, we'll be viewing it as a more normal way to build data centers," Pichai told Fox News in an interview in November.  Musk, in his announcement of the SpaceX and xAI merger, meanwhile said that within three years satellites would be the cheapest way to generate AI compute power.

However, experts Engadget spoke to in February expressed doubts whether it's possible to carry out AI inference in space at scale. GPUs in satellites would be subjected to constant cosmic radiation that would affect their ability to perform error-free calculations, and cooling them in the near vacuum of space, where the only way to dissipate heat is to slowly radiate it out, is difficult. On top of all that, putting millions of satellites in low Earth orbit is very likely to have extremely detrimental effects on the planet's atmosphere and the ability of other companies and governments to fly spacecraft safely.