Aetherflux, a space-based photo voltaic expertise firm hoping to beam energy right down to Earth, is now throwing its hat into the orbital knowledge heart ring.
The corporate’s new “Galactic Mind” challenge goals to hurry up synthetic intelligence knowledge heart manufacturing processes which might be hampered on Earth by power 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 comparable to 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 method to generate AI bitstreams in <3 years,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said about the topic in a Dec. 7 post on X.
Since its founding in 2024, California-based Aetherflux has targeted its efforts on space-based solar energy, with the aim 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 bounds confronted by Earth-based knowledge facilities,” the Aetherflux launch mentioned, describing the corporate’s deliberate power-beaming capabilities as “foundational” to its orbital knowledge heart initiative, “enabling power collected in house to help not solely compute in orbit but additionally energy supply on Earth.”
In response to Aetherflux’s design, many small satellites will transmit power by way of infrared lasers to floor stations, the place the facility and knowledge might 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.
