By TOI Tech Desk
Publication Date: 2026-02-22 09:33:00
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has dismissed the idea of putting data centres in space as “ridiculous,” a remark that doesn’t just target his long-time rival Elon Musk—it also throws cold water on plans from Google, Jeff Bezos, and a growing list of startups racing to park GPUs in orbit.Speaking during a live interview in New Delhi on Friday, Altman said the economics simply don’t add up right now. “Do the very rough math of launch costs relative to the cost of power we can do on Earth,” he said, adding that fixing a broken GPU hundreds of miles above the planet is a problem nobody has solved. “Orbital data centres are not something that’s going to matter at scale this decade.”
Musk wants a million satellites; Altman says good luck repairing even one
Musk’s vision is the most ambitious of the lot. SpaceX has filed with the US Federal Communications Commission to launch up to one million satellites that would function…
