Planet Labs CEO Says Most Compute Will Move to Space Within Decade

What was said

"In space, you can put a solar panel in a sun-synchronous dawn-dusk orbit where you are 24/7 looking at the sun. So you can have a solar panel that collects and gathers 5 times more energy per solar panel than on the ground, and you don't have to have batteries or anything else. I think no question within 10 years, most compute will be put in space, which to give you a sense, is a lot of money, like trillions, and will be bigger than any of the other space businesses today."

Will Marshall, CEO of Planet Labs, predicted that within a decade the majority of computing infrastructure will be located in space rather than on Earth. He cited a Google study showing space-based data centers will become cheaper than terrestrial ones when launch costs drop to $200-300 per kilogram, a threshold he expects to reach in 2-3 years. The company is already partnering with Google and NVIDIA to launch chips into orbit, marking what could become a multi-trillion dollar industry transformation.