Debate! Space Based Data Centers - #SFTechWeek

Thursday, Oct 8

7:00pm

Hosted by

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Years ago the idea of data centers in space sounded like a pitch-deck fantasy. Not anymore. Starcloud launched a satellite carrying an Nvidia H100 in November 2025 and became the first to train an LLM and run a version of Gemini in orbit. Google announced Project Suncatcher, a moonshot to put its TPUs on solar-powered satellites. By February 2026, multiple operators were running production workloads in space for the first time in history. For Tech Week Small Steps & Giant Leaps is bringing this fight to San Francisco- Live, in person, and open to anyone who cares where the next generation of compute gets built. Founders, engineers, investors, data center operators, space skeptics, and true believers all in one room. **The case for orbit:** A solar array in the right orbit can be up to eight times more productive than the same panels on the ground, running nearly continuously without heavy batteries. No land. No cooling water. Proponents cite solar energy costs as low as half a cent per kilowatt-hour. As terrestrial data centers strain power grids and drain reservoirs, space starts to look less crazy and more inevitable. **The case against:** The projects are early, and viability is still an open question- the cost of launching servers to orbit, where the waste heat actually goes, and how you maintain and upgrade hardware you can't physically reach. Skeptics calculate that orbital compute costs roughly three times more per watt than the equivalent on Earth. Rejecting heat in vacuum is hard. Radiation degrades chips. And a server you can't send a technician to is a server you'd better get right the first time. Two sides will make their case on stage, then the floor opens up. Bring your questions and your counterarguments- this is a room full of people who actually understand thermal management, launch economics, and orbital mechanics, and they won't let a weak claim slide. Come ready to change your mind. Or defend your position. This event is a part of #SFTechWeek—a week of events hosted by VCs and startups to bring together the tech ecosystem. Learn more at www.tech-week.com.

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