SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son said there’s little merit to building data centers in space, as championed by Elon Musk, predicting that the AI race will be clinched by compute on Earth.
The main advantage of building data centers in space would be to slash electricity costs. But such expenses comprise a small fraction of the cost of operating data centers, compared with hardware like chips, Son said during an annual shareholder meeting for SoftBank’s mobile unit on Tuesday. The tradeoff for any power cost reductions would also include higher fees to transport everything into space, maintenance and communication delays, he added.