Google is about to test a radically different answer to AI’s growing demand for energy and compute: put some of the infrastructure in space. Project Suncatcher will send Google TPU hardware into orbit next week to see how it handles launch forces, radiation and cooling in a vacuum. Google says future systems could use near constant sunlight for power and eventually connect groups of satellites with high speed optical links to distribute AI workloads. The distinction matters. Google is not launching a full AI data center next week. This first mission is an engineering test designed to answer a more basic question: Can the hardware required for AI compute reliably operate in orbit? Google plans another milestone in 2027 involving two satellites testing inter satellite communication. If the economics and engineering eventually work, the implications are enormous. The AI infrastructure race may not remain entirely terrestrial. #MacroSift #Google #ArtificialIntelligence #SpaceTec...