Aetherflux, a space-based photo voltaic expertise firm hoping to beam energy all the way down to Earth, is now throwing its hat into the orbital information heart ring.
The corporate’s new “Galactic Mind” venture goals to hurry up synthetic intelligence information heart manufacturing processes which are hampered on Earth by vitality necessities and development timelines by launching a constellation of solar-powered satellites able to the identical computing energy with out the cumbersome infrastructure.
The announcement comes as AI computing energy wants are quickly rising and main corporations with pores and skin already within the recreation reminiscent of OpenAI, Google and Amazon have begun significantly contemplating orbital options for their very own computing wants.
“Satellites with localized AI compute, the place simply the outcomes are beamed again from low-latency, sun-synchronous orbit, would be the lowest price technique to generate AI bitstreams in <3 years,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk mentioned in regards to the subject in a Dec. 7 put up on X.
Since its founding in 2024, California-based Aetherflux has targeted its efforts on space-based solar energy, with the purpose of “constructing an American energy grid in house,” and the corporate’s new Galactic Mind initiative suits neatly into that imaginative and prescient.
“Steady solar energy and superior thermal methods take away the boundaries confronted by Earth-based information facilities,” the Aetherflux launch mentioned, describing the corporate’s deliberate power-beaming capabilities as “foundational” to its orbital information heart initiative, “enabling vitality collected in house to help not solely compute in orbit but in addition energy supply on Earth.”
In response to Aetherflux’s design, many small satellites will transmit vitality by infrared lasers to floor stations, the place the ability and information will be subsequently distributed. “We anticipate powerbeaming to be dramatically extra dependable than present solar energy era on the bottom,” the discharge mentioned.
The corporate hopes to launch its first power-beaming demonstration satellite tv for pc to low Earth orbit someday in 2026.
