The idea of data centers in space has officially escaped the realm of speculation. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, global leaders framed orbital computing not as science fiction, but as a structural response to the most pressing constraint facing artificial intelligence today: Earth itself. Power shortages, cooling limits, land scarcity, permitting delays, and carbon pressure are colliding just as AI demand is accelerating beyond anything existing infrastructure was des

When markets talk about “$3 trillion flowing into AI,” the assumption is usually software, models, and abstract innovation. In reality, the bulk of the capital is being deployed into physical systems: data centers, high-density compute, networking, cooling, and the power infrastructure required to run them continuously. This is not a digital spending cycle—it is an industrial one. What’s unfolding is closer to the buildout of railroads, telecom, or electrification than a typi