Silicon Valley Eyes Moon for AI: Google, Musk & Bezos Lead Race

Silicon Valley's focus is not only on Earth but also on the moon where the top tech guys are already thinking about the AI data centres. Beside Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk the industry leaders are looking into off-planet ways to back huge AI operations.

Google has just come up with a new project, the Suncatcher, which is aimed at the AI data centres powered by solar energy in space. The new plan is to deal with the high energy needs of AI systems and the shrinking land for them on Earth. In fact, the company has two experimental satellites planned for launch by 2027 to check their infrastructure based on the moon.

The movement is not only confined to the tech giants. Start-ups like Starcloud, Axiom Space, and Lonestar Data Holdings are also working on data storage networks in space. The race between China and the US is getting hotter in this budding sector of space-tech. China has announced to place 12 satellites running AI in low-Earth orbit going claim by calling it the “Three-Body Computing Constellation” as the world’s first orbital supercomputer network.

Analysts have been saying that the data centres in space would have many benefits over the ones on Earth. Constant solar power in space means no dependence on electricity from the Earth while the cooling from nature cuts down on both water and energy consumption. These changes are seen as possible by the industry as Earth is already running out of land, energy, and cooling for the internet infrastructure, thus, eternity might be the answer for the future of internet infrastructure.

The drive towards data infrastructure in space and on the moon marks a critical juncture in the tech deployment indicating that AI activities might soon take place beneath the moon's surface, thus, lessening the impact on the environment and creating a new era for computing.