By Al Root
AI data centers in space are looking like a thing after all. And even if Elon Musk's trillion-dollar rocket company SpaceX isn't the one running the data centers, it will be the one to put computing power in orbit.
Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Alphabet's Google and SpaceX were in talks to launch Google's orbital data centers in space. SpaceX and Alphabet didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the report, but Alphabet had been in discussion with many launch providers after announcing its " Project Suncatcher" in November, a research initiative aimed at building orbital data centers powered by the sun.
Musk, of course, has designs on his own space-based computing. SpaceX is expected to raise a record amount of cash in a midyear IPO, valuing SpaceX at up to $2 trillion. Some of the IPO money will be for AI data centers in space, which Musk believes will be cost-competitive with terrestrial data centers in a few years.
Key to Musk's hopes is SpaceX's huge, fully reusable rocket, Starship, which is slated to test again this coming week. Starship stands more than 400 feet tall, with the booster and upper stage stacked on top of one another. It can carry a lot of cargo into space and is designed to cut the cost of reaching low Earth orbit by as much as 90% compared with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which cut the cost to reach space by roughly 95% compared with the Space Shuttle.
SpaceX dominates the launch business, accounting for more that half of all orbital launches worldwide. It's never felt the need to press that advantage by locking out other companies from reaching space.
SpaceX is taking satellites for Amazon.com's constellation that will eventually compete with SpaceX's Starlink space-based broadband product, which has more than 10 million subscribers.
There might be some method in that madness. In this case, Alphabet's interest in space data centers validates Musk's plans, which underpin SpaceX's massive valuation.
SpaceX, of course, competes directly with Alphabet's AI business after merging with xAI in February.
A little competition never hurt anybody.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
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May 13, 2026 10:57 ET (14:57 GMT)
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