Masayoshi Son dismisses Musk's idea for orbital data centers

4 hours ago

Masayoshi Son argues that building data centers in space, as proposed by Elon Musk, has little merit, believing the AI race will be determined by Earth-based computing power.
He explains that the main advantage of space data centers—reducing electricity costs—is minor compared to hardware expenses like chips, and trade-offs include higher transport and maintenance costs, plus communication delays.
SoftBank is focusing on building formidable data center capacity on Earth, committing around $65 billion to OpenAI and investing hundreds of billions globally, while acknowledging intense AI competition but seeing room for massive growth.
Separately, SoftBank's telecom unit is planning to enter AI-focused 'neocloud' infrastructure and data center storage battery markets in the U.S. and Japan, with the Japanese neocloud launch scheduled for this year.

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