Why Is Google Putting AI Data Centers in Space?

Sundar Pichai says Project Suncatcher is Google's pilot, with Planet Labs and SpaceX, for AI data centers in space. Alex Heath asked whether it was still up. Sundar Pichai says it is doing well, he watched the launch, and he expects a chance to say hello to the TPUs.

He compares the bet to starting Waymo. He remembers flying to the desert for the Stanley car in the DARPA challenge, when today's Waymo would have sounded like science fiction. A 10 to 20 year span is a long time, he says, and a world-class team taking the early steps of a deep commitment will hit milestones.

The reason to go now is energy. Sun-synchronous orbits give access to power 24 hours a day. Earth has limited physical space. Data centers look large next to how they looked 10 years ago, and he does not think Earth would look nice if Google tried to put 20 years of extrapolated compute on the ground. He also calls it a moonshot in the spirit of the 1960s push to reach the moon: an ambitious goal forces progress and invents useful things along the way, the way early AI work produced Waymo and Google's TPUs.

Alex Heath asked whether Project Suncatcher is the next Alphabet company, like Waymo. Sundar Pichai says Google has not planned it as a spinoff. He views it as the future way Google will scale up compute, and he says Google is committed to doing that well.