By Jack Delaney
Publication Date: 2026-03-29 14:03:00
The idea of data centers in space sounds like science fiction, but it’s a business concept that Nvidia (NVDA 2.13%) is taking seriously. On March 16, it announced a new computing module that could slowly start to shape the infrastructure needed to turn those ambitions in the space community into more of a reality.
We will dive deeper into that announcement, but first, let’s set the stage with some context.
Image source: Getty Images.
The reason for data centers in space
Building data centers is becoming an increasingly contentious endeavor, as local communities worry about rising utility bills and the environmental impacts of their construction and operation.
Proponents of orbital data centers (ODCs), which will be designed as clusters of satellites carrying advanced computing hardware, assert that placing them in space can reduce strain on terrestrial power grids and alleviate some environmental concerns.
There has been some early progress in testing what data center infrastructure in space could look like.
In November 2025, space tech company Starcloud successfully launched its Starcloud-1 satellite, the first satellite to operate an Nvidia H100 GPU in space. With that processor, Starcloud also became the first company to train an artificial intelligence (AI) model in space, using a version of a simple project called NanoGPT.
Something to consider, however, is that many of the benefits of space-based data centers largely remain hypothetical, while their proponents may…