Over the weekend, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reacted to comments from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who warned the U.S. needs an additional 92 gigawatts of power to sustain artificial intelligence growth.
AI Power Demand Surges As Grid Strains
Musk shared a video clip of Schmidt saying, U.S. is “running out of electricity.” He also noted that the average nuclear plant generates about 1.5 gigawatts.
“If only there were a company that could do this,” Musk wrote on X while sharing the clip, referring to the emerging need for data centers in space.
Schmidt’s warning highlights a mounting energy bottleneck as AI systems require massive data centers, intensive cooling and round-the-clock power.
Previously, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya also cautioned that electricity rates could double within five years without structural changes.
Previously, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos predicted that within two decades, orbital data centers could rival the cost of terrestrial facilities.
Google’s Space Data Center Moonshot
In December 2025, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) Sundar Pichai reaffirmed the company’s Project Suncatcher, a plan to test small orbital data center prototypes by 2027.
The concept aims to harness uninterrupted solar power in space and potentially reduce cooling constraints.
Pichai described the effort as a “moonshot,” similar in ambition to Waymo, saying early test racks would evaluate reliability and thermal management in orbit.
Earlier in November, Pichai said the initiative is feasible only because of Musk’s space venture SpaceX’s significant breakthroughs in launch technology.
This month, SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI startup xAI in a deal that values the combined company at $1.25 trillion. The newly formed SpaceX-xAI entity is expected to go public later this year to help finance Musk’s vision of deploying data centers in space.
Skepticism From AWS
Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, has said that space-based data centers are “not economical” today.
“If you think about the cost of getting a payload into space today, it’s massive,” he said, adding, “There are not enough rockets.”
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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