A US startup, Orbital, is looking to set up space-based data centres to meet the surging demand for AI computing power. The company aims to launch its first data centre satellite next year, with plans for 100,000 satellites in low Earth orbit to deliver 10 gigawatts of compute. Orbital plans to scale up deployment towards the end of the decade when the SpaceX-owned Starship will come online and significantly reduce the launch cost, Poon said.