Data centers in space.

Yes, really.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Nova Saffo.

Every time AI generates a graphic or answers a query, a data center somewhere is involved.

That means high-powered chips are involved, electricity is involved, as well as large cooling systems.

The more AI utilization grows, the bigger the data centers.

In one corner of the startup world, there's an effort to solve the

resource dilemma we're facing by putting data centers in space where there's lots of room,

solar power, and a cold environment. Evan Robinson Johnson wrote about this in the information.

If the audience is familiar with traditional data centers, sprawling campuses, large,

rectangular buildings full of tightly packed AI processors for the latest AI models,

it's basically taking some of those same fundamentals and scaling it down drastically

to something that is more the size of a refrigerator and has

additional protections for space and has large solar panels to power them.

And are there startups out there that are about to make this happen?

There are. So reporting focused on two Star Cloud out of Washington and Axiom space,

both of which are looking at initial designs and actually trying to send basically

prototype satellites up into space earlier and by the end of this year.

And there are some big names involved in this effort as well, aren't there?

There are. There's been expressed interest from Eric Schmidt, who was the former CEO of Google

and has expressed interest through his new rocket company. And Jeff Bezos, who has obviously

...