Sam Altman is trying to buy his own rocket company to compete with SpaceX. The key: data centers

The rivalry between Sam Altman and Elon Musk has just reached its highest point: space. And all so that OpenAI can deploy its own data centers in space.

The news. As revealed by the Wall Street Journalthe CEO of OpenAI has been exploring the purchase of Stoke Space, a Seattle startup that develops reusable rockets, with the goal of building data centers in space.

Although talks with Stoke Space cooled in the fall, the move confirms a trend we’ve been observing for months: Silicon Valley is outgrowing the Earth to fuel AI.

Sam’s plan. According to the Journal’s sources, Sam Altman was not looking for a launch provider, but rather an investment that would ensure OpenAI majority control of Stoke Space.

Stoke Space, founded in 2020 by former Blue Origin engineers, is developing a fully reusable rocket called ‘Nova’ to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

So that. Altman maintains a tense rivalry with Elon Musk, so the logic of this move would be to reduce OpenAI’s dependence on Musk’s rockets in the event that it decided to deploy servers in space.

But above that there is a purely energetic motivation. The computing demand for AI is so insatiable that the environmental consequences of keeping it on Earth will be unsustainable. In certain orbits, however, solar energy is available 24/7 and the vacuum of space offers an infinite heat sink to cool equipment without wasting water.

The fever of space data centers. Altman is not alone in this race. What until recently seemed like an eccentricity has become a serious project for big technology companies:

And what does Musk say? The irony of Altman pursuing his own rocket company is that the industry’s undisputed leader, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, already has the infrastructure in place.

While his competitors design prototypes and seek financing, Musk has cut off the debate with his usual forcefulness: in the face of the discussion about the need to build new orbital data centers, He assured that there is no need to reinvent the wheel: “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites… SpaceX is going to do it.”

Images | Brazilian Ministry of Communications | Village Global

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