Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted on Friday, October 3, that gigawatt-scale data centres will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years and will eventually outperform those based on Earth.
His vision is driven by the growing energy and cooling demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing on Earth, and he officially announced that gigawatt-scale data centres will be built in space.
In this connection, the Amazon founder, during a public conversation with chairperson of Ferrari John Elkann, said, "We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centres in space within the next couple of decades."
Meanwhile, hosting data centres in space presents its own challenges, including the difficulty of maintenance and upgrades, as well as the high cost and risk associated with rocket launches.
The executive chair of Amazon was of the view that the AI wave mirrors the dot-com boom and bust cycle, where early excitement gave way to a sharp market correction.
He stated, “It is important to decorrelate the potential bubbles and their bursting consequences that might not happen from the actual reality and that the benefits of AI were expected to be broadly diffused and it will go everywhere."
The conclusion drawn from Jeff Bezos's prediction is that this infrastructural shift is a necessary tool, driven by the demands of AI, repositioning the space industry to focus on crucial Earth-bound services rather than solely on exploration.
