Softbank Group founder Masayoshi Son has expressed that the space-based data center concept championed by Elon Musk holds limited value, stating that the competition in artificial intelligence will be decided by computing power on Earth.
Softbank Group Corp founder Masayoshi Son spoke at the annual shareholders meeting for the company's mobile business on Tuesday. He addressed the core advantage of building data centers in space, which appears to be a drastic reduction in electricity costs. However, he noted that power expenses constitute only a very small fraction of the total operational costs of a data center, with hardware like chips being the primary expenditure. He further added that even if electricity costs are saved, one would have to bear the high costs of transporting materials to space, maintenance expenses, and would also face issues with communication latency, making the endeavor not worthwhile.
During the meeting, a Softbank shareholder inquired whether the Japanese conglomerate would emulate the grand vision of Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk. Son responded, "The AI competition over the next few years is far more critical than a vision for a decade from now." He stated that Softbank will focus on building large-scale, powerful ground-based data center computing capacity, asserting, "The first mover wins."
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