At the Italian Tech Week in Turin on October 3, 2025, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos painted a bold vision for the future of technology—one that reaches far beyond Earth’s surface. In a public conversation with Ferrari and Stellantis chairman John Elkann, Bezos predicted that gigawatt-scale data centres will be constructed in space within the next 10 to 20 years, fundamentally changing the way the world stores and processes information. It’s a prospect that’s as ambitious as it is intriguing, and it’s already capturing the imagination of tech giants and industry watchers alike.
Bezos’s remarks, widely reported by Reuters, AFP, and other outlets, centered on the unique advantages of orbital data centres. “These giant training clusters, those will be better built in space, because we have solar power there, 24/7. There are no clouds and no rain, no weather,” he explained. The continuous availability of solar energy in orbit, he argued, would allow space-based data centres to eventually outperform those on Earth—both in efficiency and in cost.
It’s a timely prediction. As data centres on the ground consume ever-increasing amounts of electricity and water—currently accounting for about 5% of U.S. power usage, according to Benzinga, and projected to double—companies are feeling the squeeze. The demand for cooling and constant power is driving up costs and putting pressure on local infrastructure. No wonder, then, that the idea of moving these massive operations off-planet is gaining traction among the world’s leading technology firms.
But Bezos’s vision isn’t just about chasing efficiency or savings. He sees it as part of a broader trend of using space to improve life here on Earth—a trend that’s already well underway with weather and communication satellites. “It’s already happened with weather and communication satellites,” Bezos said, according to Reuters. “The next step is data centres, then other kinds of manufacturing.” From his perspective, the migration of critical infrastructure to space is a natural next step in humanity’s technological evolution.
Of course, this leap is not without its challenges. Hosting data centres in orbit presents a host of new difficulties, from the complexities of maintenance and upgrades to the daunting costs and risks associated with launching rockets. As Bezos acknowledged, “There are no clouds and no rain, no weather,” but there are still plenty of hazards: “The cost of launching rockets, as well as the risk the launches may fail,” he noted, are significant obstacles. Maintenance in space is, to put it mildly, a far cry from sending a technician down the hall.
Nevertheless, Bezos remains confident that these hurdles can be overcome. In fact, he went so far as to predict that within the next couple of decades, “We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centres in space.” The implication is clear: with the right advances in launch technology and orbital operations, the economic case for space-based data centres could soon become irresistible.
This optimism extends to the broader technological landscape as well. Bezos, who has invested in AI startup Perplexity, described artificial intelligence as currently being in an “industrial bubble.” But unlike the financial bubbles that have triggered economic crises in the past, he believes this one could ultimately benefit society. “Investors don’t usually give a team of six people a couple billion dollars with no product... and that’s happening today,” he remarked, as reported by AFP. “This is a kind of industrial bubble. But that is not the same as a banking bubble such as the 2008 crisis.”
He elaborated further, drawing a parallel with the internet boom of the early 2000s. “We should be extremely optimistic that the societal and beneficial consequences of AI, like we had with internet 25 years ago, are for real and there to stay,” Bezos said, according to Tribune and Reuters. “It is important to decorrelate the potential bubbles and their bursting consequences that might or might not happen from the actual reality.” For Bezos, the real story is not the risk of speculative excess, but the transformative potential of the underlying technology. “The benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic,” he insisted. “AI is real. And it is going to change every industry... it is going to affect every company in the world.”
It’s a message that resonates in an era of rapid technological change. Multiple technologies, Bezos suggested, are in a kind of “golden age”—a sentiment echoed by U.S. President Trump and others. There’s never been a better time, in his view, to be excited about the future. While he acknowledged that the hype around artificial intelligence has some of the hallmarks of the dot-com era, he urged listeners to focus on the enduring value that these innovations will bring.
Still, the path forward is likely to be anything but smooth. The technical and logistical challenges of building and maintaining space-based data centres are formidable. Launching massive payloads into orbit remains expensive and risky, and once there, making repairs or upgrades is a daunting proposition. As Reuters and Benzinga both noted, the risk of launch failures and the difficulty of maintaining hardware in space could be major stumbling blocks.
Yet the potential rewards are equally enormous. With data centres accounting for an ever-larger share of global energy consumption, the promise of harnessing uninterrupted solar power in space is tantalizing. If Bezos’s predictions bear out, the next two decades could see a seismic shift in the way the world’s digital infrastructure is built and operated. The migration of data processing to orbit could free up resources on Earth, reduce the environmental impact of terrestrial data centres, and open the door to new forms of manufacturing and innovation in space.
For now, the industry is watching closely. Amazon’s own stock has reflected the broader excitement around these technological trends, with shares gaining 17.7% over the past year and the company’s market capitalization reaching $2.34 trillion, according to Benzinga. But as with any transformative shift, the outcome will depend on a complex interplay of technological breakthroughs, economic incentives, and—perhaps most importantly—the willingness to take risks and dream big.
As the world grapples with the twin challenges of digital growth and environmental sustainability, Bezos’s vision offers a glimpse of a possible future—one where the clouds that once limited our power are left far behind, and the next frontier of computing is measured not in miles, but in orbits.
