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Jeff Bezos told CNBC on Wednesday that data centers operating in orbit are a "very realistic" outcome but cautioned that the industry's near-term timelines are too aggressive.
"Some of the timelines we hear are very short," Jeff Bezos told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin. "People would talk about two or three years. That's probably a little ambitious."
Among the obstacles Bezos identified are the cost of energy, the price of chips, and the expense of getting hardware into orbit. Cheaper chips would open up more financial headroom in the data center business, he explained, while reductions in launch pricing are a prerequisite for making orbital facilities economically viable.
His remarks arrive at a moment when AI's voracious appetite for power and physical space has pushed companies to look beyond Earth for computing infrastructure. Advocates of putting data centers in orbit contend that the approach unlocks abundant solar power and sidesteps the increasingly difficult task of securing large parcels of land for ground-based facilities.
