Will SpaceX Build AI Data Centres In Space?

During their recent episode, Taylor, Carlisle, and John Love discussed Will SpaceX Build AI Data Centres In Space?. Here’s an excerpt from the episode:

[Tobias] Well, SpaceX is going to create data centres in space that do all of the AI processing in space and just send information back to earth. It’s going to send AI computation back to earth. What do you guys think of that?

[John] Well, I mean, Elon Musk has done some remarkable stuff. On the other hand, these are pretty audacious cities on Mars. Starlink sounded crazy and it’s a very viable thing and never on his schedule.

So I don’t know. I’m not in the tech space enough to know how viable that is, but I think eventually at least some of it comes to fruition. That’s a cool idea.

[Jake] I mean, I don’t know how real these numbers are, but I’ve heard it’s 20% of the cost is energy and effectively if you’re up in space and you’re kind of always at the sun and there’s lots of room for solar panels, you’re effectively like zero marginal cost on energy then. That sounds cool. I mean, I don’t know.

It’s getting it up there. As long as it keeps getting cheaper, maybe that does make sense. I think it’s a cool idea.