The great AI space race has begun.
Google has been quietly working on a long-term research initiative, internally known as Project Suncatcher, to “one day scale machine learning in space.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday that Google’s goal is to start putting data centers in space, powered by the sun, as soon as 2027.
“We are taking our first step in ’27,” he said. “We’ll send tiny, tiny racks of machines, and have them in satellites, test them out, and then start scaling from there.”
In a decade, Pichai said that it’ll be normal to build extraterrestrial data centers.
“At Google, we’re always proud of taking moonshots,” he said. “One of our moonshots is: How do we one day have data centers in space so that we can better harness the energy from the sun, which is one hundred trillion times more energy than we produce in all of Earth today.”
Google’s cosmic pivot comes amid growing global scrutiny over the power demands of data centers.
“There is still much we don’t know about the environmental impact of AI, but some of the data we do have is concerning,” Sally Radwan, the chief digital officer of the United Nations Environment Program, said in a press release in November. “We need to make sure the net effect of AI on the planet is positive before we deploy the technology at scale.”
The UN says AI’s toll on the environment stems from the extraction of rare materials and minerals needed to build the technology and microchips to power the technology, the massive amounts of electronic waste data centers produce, the water needed to operate and cool data centers, and the greenhouse gases produced by operating data centers.
Google’s plan is to divert some of that environmental toll off the planet.
“In 2027, hopefully we’ll have a TPU somewhere in space,” he said, referring to the company’s custom AI chip, on the “Google AI: Release Notes” podcast last week.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
