Crusoe and Starcloud's Solar-Powered Data Centres in Space

AI infrastructure provider Crusoe has announced a partnership with Starcloud to deploy the first public cloud operating from space.

The agreement will see Crusoe Cloud infrastructure integrated onto a Starcloud satellite, which is planned for launch in late 2026.

Following the launch, GPU capacity is anticipated to be accessible from orbit by early 2027.

This collaboration brings together Crusoe’s energy-focused data centre model with Starcloud's satellite technology, aiming to move beyond the physical and energy constraints of facilities on Earth.

Crusoe's business model is built on situating its data centre operations close to stranded or renewable energy sources to lower emissions and enhance efficiency.

Moving into orbit is an extension of this strategy, using solar energy as a plentiful and reliable power source for high-performance computing tasks.

Extending sustainable AI to space

Crusoe’s strategy is aligned with its objective of designing sustainable data infrastructure to meet the rising demand for AI computation.

By moving into space, Crusoe can bypass terrestrial grid limitations completely, using solar power that is generated directly by orbital arrays to power its operations.

“At Crusoe, we believe that space will ultimately matter to the future of computing because it enables new solutions to a key scaling constraint for AI infrastructure, which is sourcing abundant, consistent and clean energy,” says Cully Cavness, Co-Founder, President and COO of Crusoe. 

“Since our founding, Crusoe has specialised on co-locating compute infrastructure with novel energy sources.

“By partnering with Starcloud, we will extend our energy-first approach from Earth to the next frontier: outer space.”

On Earth, Crusoe utilises flared natural gas and renewable energy to power its data centres, which reduces waste emissions from energy production. It now intends to apply comparable energy-optimisation principles to its operations in space.

Orbital data centre design

Starcloud's orbital data centre is a satellite-based computing platform.

It integrates solar power generation with high-performance processors and onboard cooling systems.

According to Starcloud, this platform removes the need for physical land, traditional cooling methods or connections to the grid, while offering a stable and scalable environment for computation.

The satellite, set to launch in 2026, will feature a dedicated Crusoe Cloud module, allowing customers to run AI workloads from space.

Starcloud says that the design can manage both inference and training workloads for AI applications that require high throughput and have a minimal environmental footprint.

“Having Crusoe as the foundational cloud provider on our platform is a perfect alignment of vision and execution,” says Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud.

“Crusoe's expertise in building rugged, efficient, and scalable computing solutions makes them the ideal partner to pioneer this new era. 

“Together, we are building not just a data centre in space, but a new category of cloud computing that will unlock extraordinary possibilities for research, discovery and innovation.”

Scaling cloud computing beyond Earth

The partnership places Crusoe and Starcloud in a leading position in a new era of digital infrastructure design, where data centres are not confined by geography or terrestrial restrictions.

As AI models become more complex and larger in scale, having access to dependable, high-density power has become a major challenge for data centre operators.

Crusoe's space-based project aims to tackle this challenge by using the most consistent clean energy source available.

Crusoe and Starcloud have also outlined their intentions to develop larger orbital data centres in the future, increasing capacity as the demand for high-performance AI computing grows.

This plan could involve the construction of multiple satellites that host decentralised compute infrastructure, which would create a distributed space-based cloud network.