Jeff Bezos said Wednesday that space-based data centers will eventually become a reality but that current timelines circulating in the industry are too short, telling CNBC that projections of two to three years are "probably a little ambitious."
The Amazon founder called 2-to-3-year projections for orbital data centers "a little ambitious" while confirming Blue Origin is weighing outside investors
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Jeff Bezos said Wednesday that space-based data centers will eventually become a reality but that current timelines circulating in the industry are too short, telling CNBC that projections of two to three years are "probably a little ambitious."
Bezos acknowledged the uncertainty around timing. "Exactly how long it will take I don't think anyone knows," he said. "But it is real. It will happen." On Musk's shorter projections, Bezos offered a characteristically dry explanation of the philosophy he attributed to his rival: "I think what Elon would tell you is … you know, 'If you want it to be six years, say it's three.'"
Two obstacles stood out in Bezos's remarks: AI chip prices remain too high to make orbital data centers cost-effective, and the expense of getting hardware into orbit has not fallen far enough, even with recent progress. Until both decline, he said, companies would need to keep building terrestrial capacity. "The timeline is very different," he told CNBC. "You're going to need as much terrestrial data-center capacity as you can arrange in the near term."
Despite the skepticism about near-term timelines, Bezos called space-based data centers a "very realistic" outcome. Advocates for the technology point to two advantages satellites could offer over ground-based facilities: abundant solar power and freedom from the land-use pressures that make siting large data centers increasingly difficult.
The company has already begun laying regulatory groundwork: in March it filed paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission covering 51,600 orbital data-center satellites under a program it calls Project Sunrise, backed by a planned constellation named TeraWave, for which it is seeking FCC clearance to start launches as early as the fourth quarter of 2027.
Bezos also confirmed that Blue Origin is considering bringing on outside investors for the first time. Amazon $AMZN stock sales have been his primary mechanism for financing Blue Origin across its 25-year history. He put it plainly in the interview: "It's a good time, actually, to start thinking about the future and bring on some other outside investors."
The comments arrived ahead of an expected IPO filing from SpaceX, which Musk merged with his artificial intelligence company xAI. A valuation as high as $2 trillion and a fundraising target of roughly $80 billion have been cited in connection with the offering, The Wall Street Journal reported. Asked to weigh in on the figure, Bezos said separating the company's underlying business from the expectations baked into a number that size was difficult for him to do — though he closed with a broader point: "One thing I can tell you for sure is that space is going to be a gigantic industry."
Blue Origin has faced its own recent turbulence. The company's New Glenn rocket placed a communications satellite into the wrong orbit earlier this year, destroying the payload and sending AST SpaceMobile stock down sharply. After the upper stage released the satellite into the wrong trajectory, operators commanded the spacecraft to reenter the atmosphere, where it was destroyed. The incident raised questions about Blue Origin's reliability as it competes for a central role in NASA's Artemis lunar program.
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