Sundar Pichai announces Google's plan to construct solar-powered data centers in space by 2027

Earlier this month, Google introduced Project Suncatcher, an ambitious initiative designed to lower the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence by relocating data centers into space, where they will be powered by solar energy.

During an interview with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that the company intends to start sending "machines" into orbit as early as 2027. "Our first step in 2027 will involve launching small racks of machines into satellites for testing, before gradually scaling up," Pichai explained.

Project Suncatcher represents a long-term research effort to eventually scale machine learning operations in space. Pichai envisions a future where extraterrestrial data centers become commonplace, allowing Google to harness solar energy far more efficiently than on Earth. "The sun provides roughly one hundred trillion times the energy we currently generate on Earth," he noted, describing it as one of the companys moonshot ambitions.

The initiative comes amid increasing global attention on the environmental impact of data centers. According to Sally Radwan, Chief Digital Officer at the United Nations Environment Program, AI's environmental costs include the extraction of rare minerals for technology, production of microchips, electronic waste from data centers, water usage for cooling, and greenhouse gas emissions. Radwan emphasized the importance of ensuring AI has a net positive effect on the planet before widespread deployment.

Google hopes to mitigate some of these impacts by moving parts of its data infrastructure off-planet. On the Google AI: Release Notes podcast, Pichai mentioned that by 2027, the company aims to operate a TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) in space, a custom AI chip designed to accelerate machine learning workloads.

Google has not provided an immediate comment to inquiries from Business Insider regarding the project.

Author: Sophia Brooks