AmazonfounderJeff Bezoshas said that massive data centres capable of generating gigawatts of power will be constructed in space within the next 10 to 20 years and they will be better than those on Earth because they will eventually outperform their Earth-based counterparts due to uninterrupted access to solar energy and no natural interruption.Speaking at Italian Tech Week in Turin, Bezos outlined a vision where the industry’s largest computing facilities—particularly those used to train artificial intelligence models—would migrate beyond Earth’s atmosphere to take advantage of space’s unique benefits.“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,” Bezos said during a public conversation.The Amazon executive chair added that orbital data centres would become cost-competitive with terrestrial facilities “in the next couple of decades.”

The concept of space-based data centres has gained attention among technology companies as ground-based facilities increasingly strain power grids and water supplies needed to cool massive server farms.Bezos positioned the potential shift as part of a broader trend of using space infrastructure to benefit life on Earth, noting that weather and communication satellites have already proven the model works.“The next step is data centres, then other kinds of manufacturing,” he said.However, orbital data centers would face significant hurdles, including the challenges of maintenance and upgrades, the high cost of rocket launches, and the risk of launch failures.Bezos also compared the current surge in artificial intelligence (AI) development to the internet boom of the early 2000s, acknowledging the possibility of speculative bubbles while urging optimism about AI’s long-term impact.“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,” he said.The billionaire entrepreneur cautioned against potential market bubbles with the underlying technological reality, saying the benefits of AI “are expected to be broadly diffused and it will go everywhere.”“It is important to decorrelate the potential bubbles and their bursting consequences that might or might not happen from the actual reality,” Bezos noted.