At Italian Tech Week in Turin this October, Jeff Bezos—Amazon founder and executive chair—set the stage for a vision that could reshape the very foundation of the digital world. Addressing an audience alongside Ferrari and Stellantis chairman John Elkann, Bezos declared that within the next decade or two, humanity will begin building gigawatt-scale data centres in space. It’s a bold prediction, and one that’s already sparking debate across the tech industry and beyond.
“One of the things that’s going to happen next—is we’re going to start building these giant gigawatt data centres in space,” Bezos said, as quoted in SmartCompany and echoed by multiple outlets. To put it in perspective, a gigawatt is one billion watts of power, equivalent to the output of a large nuclear power plant. These aren’t your average server rooms—these are massive clusters designed to meet the insatiable energy needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing, both of which are driving exponential demand for electricity and water here on Earth.
Why space? The answer, Bezos argues, is simple: energy. “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, according to BizClik Media. The uninterrupted access to solar energy in orbit would allow these facilities to operate continuously, sidestepping the limitations of terrestrial solar farms, which are hampered by nightfall and unpredictable weather. For AI training clusters—those vast networks of computers that chew through data at an astonishing rate—this kind of consistent, high-power energy is not just convenient, it’s essential.
Bezos went further, predicting that space-based data centres could eventually outperform anything built on the ground. “We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centres in space in the next couple of decades,” he stated. The logic is compelling: with round-the-clock solar power and no need for water-based cooling, orbital facilities could sidestep many of the environmental and logistical headaches plaguing Earth-bound data centres. As companies train ever-larger AI models and expand cloud services, the strain on electricity grids and water resources is becoming impossible to ignore. Space, Bezos suggests, could be the ultimate pressure release valve.
The vision isn’t just about raw computing power. Bezos framed the move as part of a broader trend—using space infrastructure to improve life on Earth. “It already has happened with weather satellites. It has already happened with communication satellites. The next step is going to be data centres and then other kinds of manufacturing,” he said, according to AAP. The satellite revolution has already transformed global communication and weather forecasting; why not data storage and processing next?
Yet, for all the optimism, Bezos was careful to acknowledge the formidable challenges ahead. Maintenance, for one, is no small feat when your equipment is whizzing around the planet at thousands of miles per hour. Upgrading hardware or fixing faults means launching new components atop rockets—a process that remains expensive and risky, even as companies like SpaceX and Bezos’s own Blue Origin make strides in reusable launch technology. “It’s hard to know exactly when, it’s 10 plus years—and I bet it’s not more than 20 years,” Bezos admitted, reflecting both the ambition and uncertainty surrounding the timeline.
Speaking to the environmental strain driving this vision, Bezos noted that Earth-based data centres are already pushing global electricity consumption higher and require vast amounts of water to cool their servers. As PhoneArena reported, he predicted that enormous data centres will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years, powered by uninterrupted solar power. The hope is that by moving energy-intensive computing off-planet, companies can not only reduce their environmental footprint but also achieve efficiency gains impossible on Earth.
Bezos’s remarks come at a moment when the AI boom is drawing comparisons to the internet frenzy of the early 2000s. “It is important to decorrelate the potential bubbles and their bursting consequences that might or might not happen from the actual reality,” he cautioned, as quoted in BizClik Media. In other words: don’t let speculative mania distract from the real, long-term progress being made. The infrastructure for this future is already taking shape, with satellite networks like Amazon’s Project Kuiper and new heavy-lift rockets such as Blue Origin’s New Glenn poised to play key roles.
But Bezos’s vision goes even further. According to PhoneArena, he painted a picture of millions of people living in space by choice within a few decades, with robots handling most of the hard work on Earth while massive AI data centres orbit above. While some might dismiss this as science fiction, Bezos’s track record of turning bold ideas into reality—think Amazon, Blue Origin, and AWS—suggests it’s unwise to bet against him.
Still, the road to orbital data centres is riddled with obstacles. Maintenance and upgrades in space are dauntingly complex. Launching hardware remains costly, despite advances in reusable rockets. And the risk of mission failure—whether due to launch mishaps or technical faults in orbit—cannot be ignored. Yet, as Bezos pointed out, these are not insurmountable problems. The steady improvement in launch technology by companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin is making what once seemed futuristic increasingly feasible.
What’s at stake is more than just the next leap in computing. The very way we think about infrastructure, energy, and even where people might live and work is up for grabs. As the world’s appetite for AI and cloud services grows, the question isn’t just whether we can build data centres in space—it’s whether we must, to keep pace with demand and protect the planet’s resources.
Bezos’s vision is grand, and it’s not without skeptics. But if the past few decades have shown anything, it’s that today’s wild ideas can become tomorrow’s reality. In the words of Bezos himself: “It’s hard to know exactly when, it’s 10 plus years—and I bet it’s not more than 20 years.” Whether or not we see gigawatt-scale data centres in orbit by 2045, the conversation about how—and where—to power the future of AI has already left the ground.
