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Even as a tidal wave of AI-driven data center buildout grips the capital markets, tech titans like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are chasing a grander, ultimate destination for even more data center expansion: outer space.

Both mentioned this in separate interviews — Bezos projected last month that the concept of having “giant gigawatt data centers in space” could become a reality in the next 20 years, even beating the cost of terrestrial data centers in the following decades. Musk has an even more audacious goal, which is to launch solar-powered AI satellites into orbit that could capture the energy equivalent of 25% of the US’ entire electricity output.

“We see a path to putting 100 gigawatts per year of solar powered AI satellites into orbit,” Musk said in an interview with billionaire investor Ron Baron last week. He added that this could become the “lowest cost rate” for operating AI on a massive scale.

Extraterrestrial data centers are only the tip of Wall Street and Silicon Valley’s relentless quest to dominate the space economy, which is defined as everything that happens 100km or more above Earth.

Once considered prohibitively capital-intensive, space is now the next frontier for commercial investing. Decades of technological advancement, alongside the declining cost of launching equipment and satellites into orbit, have empowered corporations (and billionaires) to pursue ideas that were once in the realm of science fiction.

“The cost to launch mass to orbit has decreased by an order of magnitude over the past couple decades, which makes space business model economics more feasible,” said Janus Henderson research analyst Taylor Portman.