The billionaire founder of Softbank, who made a fortune backing companies with world-changing ideas like Alibaba, said Elon Musk’s orbital data center plans are as out there as the eccentric SpaceX founder himself.
“In the battle for AI, the next few years will be far more important than what might happen a decade or so from now,” Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son said Tuesday in response to a question at the annual shareholder meeting for Softbank’s wireless and broadband division Tuesday, Bloomberg reported.
Sending AI data centers in space doesn’t make sense, he explained, because it will take many years and lots of money. Instead, Softbank is focusing on building out data centers here on Earth.
“He who strikes first wins,” he said.
While Son noted that Musk is a “remarkable agent of change,” he said his idea for orbital data centers misses the mark because their main purpose would be to cut back on electricity costs, a negligible line item for data centers. Compared to hardware and chips, he said, electricity represents a fraction of the total cost of operating a data center, he explained.
