Google and SpaceX are in active discussions to launch a cluster of AI data centres into orbit, a plan that would make outer space the physical home of some of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence compute, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The project has an internal name: Suncatcher. According to the report, Google’s goal is eventually to put 81 satellites into a formation spanning roughly one kilometre in diameter, with the company’s own Tensor Processing Units, the chips that power Google’s AI models, housed onboard.
The first two prototype satellites are targeted for launch as early as 2027.
What Project Suncatcher actually involves
The core of the pitch is that the conditions for running data centres are, in theory, better in space than on the ground. You do not need to cool a building in a desert.
You do not need to build power grid infrastructure to a remote location. Space, in SpaceX’s framing, removes several of the most expensive components of large-scale AI compute.
SpaceX has been making this argument to potential partners as it prepares for a $1.75 trillion IPO planned for later in 2026. Google already owns around 6.1% of SpaceX according to current filings, so the two companies are not starting from zero.
A formal partnership on orbital data centres would deepen an existing financial relationship and give SpaceX a headline customer to present to investors before it goes public.
The TPUs Google intends to place on these satellites are the same hardware running Google DeepMind’s current generation of models. Putting them in orbit would not change what the chips do, but it would change where the compute happens and who pays the infrastructure bill to keep it running.
SpaceX is not the only one building for the sky
Google’s Suncatcher talks are not happening in isolation. SpaceX acquired Elon Musk’s AI company xAI in February 2026, a move that gave SpaceX direct skin in the AI race rather than just infrastructure exposure.
Shortly after that acquisition, Anthropic announced a deal with SpaceX to access computing resources, with the potential for orbital compute to be included in future phases of the arrangement.
What this adds up to is an AI industry that is, for the first time, treating orbit as a practical location for processing power rather than a theoretical one. Whether the economics hold once prototypes are actually in the air is something 2027 will start to answer.
The Suncatcher prototype launches are currently targeted for 2027. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the talks, noted the project remains in the negotiation phase, and no formal agreement between Google and SpaceX had been signed at the time of publishing.
