AI INFRASTRUCTURE
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few years ago, data centres were a concept most people did not know about. Now, technology giants are planning to put them into space. There is no AI without data centres – and since AI demand is only accelerating, so must data centres. However, a gigantic amount of energy is needed from these data centres to keep AI working efficiently – and since data centres are no small facility – there is now global strain on sustainability goals and space to accommodate them.
As data centres drive electricity consumption sharply higher while requiring huge amounts of water to cool servers, the energy constraints of keeping everything running have made leaders look to space.
Jeff Bezos has a prediction that gigawatt( GW)-scale data centres orbiting Earth within the next two decades will run more efficiently than anything we can build on the ground.
To put that in perspective, a GW is one billion watts of power – roughly what a large nuclear power plant could produce.
Speaking at Italian Tech Week in Turin, the Amazon Founder and Executive Chair laid out his vision during a fireside chat with John Elkann, who chairs Ferrari and Stellantis.
“ One of the things that’ s going to happen next is we’ re going to start building these giant gigawatt data centres in space,” Jeff says. This could be a bold claim, but while Jeff sketches out a 10 to 20-year timeline, some companies aren’ t waiting around. The race to orbit has already begun.
76 February 2026