Credit: Shutterstock
Google just announced something that sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie. The tech giant wants to run AI data centers in space. Yes, you read that right. Space.
The project is called Suncatcher, and Google revealed it in early November 2025. The idea is to send solar-powered satellites into orbit, pack them with AI chips, and let them handle machine learning tasks up there instead of down here on Earth.
You might be wondering why anyone would do this. Well, it all comes down to energy. AI data centers eat up massive amounts of power. Some of them use enough electricity to light up entire cities. And the problem keeps getting worse as AI gets bigger and more complex.
Google’s solution? Go straight to the ultimate power source. The sun. Up in space, solar panels can collect eight times more energy than they do on Earth. Plus, they get almost constant sunlight, so there’s no waiting for cloudy days to pass.
Here’s how Project Suncatcher would actually work. Google plans to launch groups of small satellites that fly super close together. We’re talking just a few hundred meters apart. Each satellite would have Google’s TPU chips inside. These are the special processors that run AI tasks. The satellites would talk to each other using laser beams, creating one big computing network in the sky.
Google has already done some testing. They tried out their optical connections and hit speeds of 1.6 terabits per second. That’s crazy fast. They also blasted their chips with radiation to see if they could survive in space. Good news: the chips held up way better than expected. They could probably last five years or more up there.
But there are big problems to solve. The main one is money. Launching stuff into space costs a fortune right now. Google thinks prices will drop a lot by the mid-2030s, which would make the whole thing affordable. They also need to figure out how to keep all those satellites in perfect position. And once they’re up there, you can’t exactly call a repair guy if something breaks.
Google isn’t working alone on this. They’ve partnered with a satellite company called Planet. Together, they plan to launch two test satellites by early 2027. This will be the first real proof that the technology can work.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai thinks space data centers will be normal within ten years. Other tech companies are looking at similar ideas too. It looks like we might be heading into a new space race, but this time it’s all about AI.
If Project Suncatcher succeeds, it could change everything about how we power artificial intelligence. Instead of building more giant data centers on Earth, we might just look up at the stars.
