Orbital Clouds: A Glimpse into the Future?

by

Ah, tokenization. The word itself positively buzzes with the faux-urgency of modernity. By 2025, the global market had swelled to a quite respectable $1.24 trillion, up from a merely substantial $865.54 billion the year prior. Projections whisper of even more, naturally, like a chorus of eager accountants. This, dear reader, is Part Two of a series – a grand, four-part investigation, if you will – concerning the peculiar energy demands of this new, digital obsession. I, with the reliable Max Yakubowski at my side, am attempting to untangle the implications for orbital cloud data centers. Part One, for the historically inclined, concerned the year 2025 itself. Part Three promises further examinations, and Part Four, well, that deals with sports betting. The vulgarity of it all.

  • 2025 marked the rather belated debut of orbital cloud infrastructure – a phrase that sounds faintly ridiculous, doesn’t it? – with solar-powered AI computations daring to leave the Earth’s gravity.
  • Policy and economics, those twin engines of progress (and often, of folly), combined to create a certain momentum. Launch costs are shrinking, apparently, and someone has had a breakthrough with space-based solar power. One hopes it’s not too good to be true.
  • A new energy-compute stack is forming, promising always-on, carbon-free power. Though, naturally, the tax implications are a complete mess. 🙄

After years spent wading through the mire of digital asset regulation and sustainability, I confess, I hadn’t expected to be writing about this. Especially not alongside my editor, the unflappable Yakubowski, who – bless his patience – continues to tolerate my stylistic eccentricities. But here we are. 2025 witnessed the rather daring notion of an “orbital cloud” – a term that conjures images of fluffy data – actually taking form. Prototypes, you understand. Early deployments. It’s all terribly experimental.

President Trump, in a fit of strategic brilliance (or perhaps simply boredom), declared American leadership in AI was paramount. This, predictably, led to the Department of Energy launching something called the “Genesis Mission.” One shudders to think what biblical allusions are intended. Hyperscale data center companies, keen to jump on any bandwagon promising cost efficiencies, are now eyeing orbital solar energy. It’s a spectacle, really.

Inaugural launch of orbital cloud network

On December 10, 2025, PowerBank Corporation launched the curiously named DeStarlink Genesis-1 satellite – the first, tentative step towards Orbit AI’s Orbital Cloud network. An architecture, they claim, where AI computations, connectivity, and blockchain verification all occur directly in orbit, powered by the sun. An ambition bordering on hubris, perhaps?

Orbit AI, a Singaporean enterprise, is developing a decentralized satellite network (DeStarlink) combined with orbital AI and data centers (DeStarAI), all powered by space solar energy. A collaborative effort involving PowerBank (Canada), Intellistake (also Canada), NVIDIA (US), and even the Ethereum Foundation (Switzerland). A veritable United Nations of tech, if one ignores the national origins, that is. The stated goal? Resilience to geopolitical controls. One assumes they anticipate trouble.

The emergence of this orbital infrastructure is, apparently, due to declining launch prices, component breakthroughs, and a healthy dose of public-sector funding. Solar energy in geostationary orbit avoids the pesky intermittency of terrestrial renewables. Metamaterial rectennas (a rather delicious mouthful) apparently have 90% conversion efficiency. Numbers are so very reassuring, aren’t they?

The space-based solar power market, as of 2025, stood at a mere $0.63 billion, but is projected to reach $4.19 billion by 2040. A robust 13.46% CAGR, they inform us. One wonders what such projections are actually worth.

What is a hyperscale cloud data center?

A hyperscale cloud provider? A grandiose term for a very large data center. These are the companies – AWS, Microsoft, Google – that operate vast, globally dispersed facilities offering on-demand computing resources. They scale, they compute, they store. They also, apparently, worry about power consumption in a way they hadn’t before. The integration of edge cloud is, of course, essential for distributed workloads and, of course, to be closer to their users. So very modern.

These providers use tokenization for AI model processing and data security. Very sophisticated. But all this requires immense amounts of power. Hence, the interest in orbiting solar farms. It’s all rather logical, in a cold, calculating sort of way.

Hyperscale Cloud Company Project GenesisMission Orbital Edge Computing Orbital Data Center Space Solar LEO Network LaunchRocket Robotics
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Y Y YBlue Origin – Blue Ring spacecraft Y YAmazon LEO Y Y
Microsoft Azure Y YAzure Space NSold  Azure Orbital Ground Station NSpace Azure Solar Cell Tech N N Y
Google Cloud Y Y”Space Llama” YProject Suncatcher Y N N YGoogle Deep Mind
Meta N NTerrestrial Edge Computing N YMetasat NHigh-altitude, solar-powered drones (Aquila project) N Y
Oracle Y NTerrestrial Edge Computing N N NUses Starlink N Y
IBM Y Y N Y N N Y
Apple Open AI NTerrestrial Edge Computing N NTerrestrial Solar NUses Globalstar N Y
Space X – Orbital Data Center XAI, Groq Y Y Y Starlink Y Y
CoreWeave Y NTerrestrial Edge Computing N N N N N
Open AI Y NTerrestrial Edge Computing N N N N Y
Orbit AI – Orbital Data Center N Y Y Y YDeStarlink N YInOrbit.AI, & Orbital Robotics Corp

Spade-based solar power

Space-based solar power – SBSP – the very phrase sounds like something from a forgotten science fiction serial. The idea is to generate clean energy in orbit and beam it back to Earth. Solar panels in space are, apparently, eight times more productive than those on the ground. A boon, undoubtedly, but also an opportunity for further complications.

SBSP purportedly combines decentralized satellite networks, orbital AI data centers, robotics, and wireless power transmission, all powered by blockchain verification. A technological Potemkin village, perhaps? It is, naturally, expensive and has attracted the attention of NASA, Chinese and Japanese space agencies, and, inevitably, the World Economic Forum.

Organizations like Caltech, JAXA, and China are actively developing SBSP. Caltech, rather impressively, has demonstrated wireless power beaming in orbit. The Japanese and Europeans are focusing on ground-based tests. It all sounds very promising. Too promising, perhaps. 🤔

A plethora of companies – Solaren, Space Solar, Aetherflux, EMROD – are also vying for a piece of the action. Established aerospace firms, of course, are involved, along with a scattering of smaller startups. The air is thick with ambition.

Tax law changes to commercial solar tax credits & cloud transactions

Ah, taxes. The perpetual headache of all sensible endeavors. A recent law, signed by President Trump, has altered the commercial solar tax credits, imposing strict deadlines and conditions. Apparently, full cancellation was avoided, but the details are, predictably, Byzantine.

Construction must commence by July 4, 2026, to qualify for the standard timeline, or be placed in service by December 31, 2027, to qualify for any credit. After that… well, the credit vanishes. The IRS, meanwhile, has ruled that income from cloud transactions is service income, not property leases. More regulatory wrangling. More opportunities for accountants to thrive.

Read More

2025-12-28 21:18