// WIRED US/UK — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
The Blue Wave Has Tech Bros Scrambling for Data Centers in Space
A wave of Democratic candidates across the country—and notably in Texas, a national data center hotspot and home to Elon Musk’s SpaceX—won their state and congressional races on Tuesday, including many candidates who voiced opposition to the data center industry. The results have sent some corners of the tech industry looking to the heavens for answers.
In recent hours, data center enthusiasts have proclaimed on social media that they’re still “bullish” on building data centers—just not necessarily in Texas, or even on Earth at all. Instead, they say, it’s time to focus on data centers in space.
Elon Musk—who sank more than $400 million of his fortune supporting Republican candidates who all went on to lose their midterms races—has been among those leading the charge. “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Musk posted on X in the early hours of Wednesday, after it was clear that Democrats had taken the House and Senate.
Jordan Lasker—the man behind the X account "Crémieux,” which is a popular follow in the tech world, and known for posting race-based pseudoscience—also weighed in, saying, “Data centers in space are an incredible idea and anyone who doubted them didn't think enough about tonight's election results.”
Throughout the day, Musk employees, tech investors, AI researchers, venture capitalists, and industry fans joined the chorus of support for space-based data centers. Soham Mehta, a research fellow at the techno-optimist think tank Foundation for American Innovation, argued that underwater data centers should also be considered. (In June, China began operating what it claims is the world’s first underwater data center.)
Some companies are already trying to put compute in orbit. Among them are Google, which launched a satellite that it says contains "data center class TPU,” and SpaceX, which says it aims to deploy “thousands of AI satellites starting as soon as late 2027.” Blue Origin is also in the mix, having filed for a Federal Communications Commission permit to launch 50,000 satellites that will constitute an “orbital data center system.”
There are also a few startups aiming to build data centers in space, including Starcloud, which claims to have carried "the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into orbit" in November 2025.
Despite being technically possible, the realities of in-orbit data centers are difficult. Among other things, space-based data centers are much more expensive than land-based ones, can’t grow to hyperscale size, and are subject to the risks and whims of satellite launches.
When it comes to Texas data centers, the concerns of tech bros aren’t completely unfounded. Experts tell WIRED that the change in leadership could translate to some concrete changes in the industry—albeit with limits.
Although Democrats have control of the Texas House, Republicans still have control over the state’s senate. Robert Paterson, professor of land use and environmental planning at the University of Texas at Austin, tells WIRED that the split means that some immediate attempts at change “will probably be stymied a bit.”