Sam Altman calls Elon Musk’s space data center plan ‘ridiculous’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, when asked about Elon Musk’s plan to install data centres in space, termed it as “ridiculous” at present. “The conditions for orbital data centres are not ripe yet,” Altman said while speaking at a live event. This came after SpaceX announced its plans to install satellite-based computing infrastructure.

Stressing the potential of space technology, Altaman says that building and maintaining data centres in orbit remains unrealistic at scale.

“We are not there yet,” he told the audience. He pointed to the cost of launches and the difficulty of repairing hardware in space as major obstacles. According to him, orbital data centres are unlikely to matter at scale during this decade.

Musk has a completely different vision. Recently, SpaceX revealed plans to launch a constellation of as many as one million satellites that will be used to function as orbital data centres. SpaceX has already begun recruiting engineers for the initiative.

Musk has also stated that a possible integration between SpaceX and his AI initiative, xAI, could help speed up the development of space-based computing infrastructure.

This discussion is taking place at a time when AI firms are investing billions of dollars in building Earth-based data centres to support large language models and other AI models. However, Earth-based data centres are increasingly being criticised. They require massive amounts of electricity and water and are also opposed by local communities due to environmental concerns.