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(Bloomberg) — Meta Platforms Inc. is looking to power artificial intelligence data centers with solar energy collected in space, taking a novel approach to meeting its insatiable demand for electricity.
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The company said Monday that it clinched a deal for up to 1 gigawatt of space solar energy from Overview Energy, a startup seeking to collect sunlight in satellites orbiting Earth and convert it into electricity to support the grid. A gigawatt is roughly equivalent to the power generated by a nuclear reactor.
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Overview Energy’s vision for a space-based power plant that beams energy back to Earth is still hypothetical. The startup is continuing to develop and test its underlying technology, with plans to conduct an initial orbital demonstration in 2028.
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Meta declined to comment on the financial terms of the agreement, which would provide preferential access to Overview Energy’s future capacity. The companies said they expect commercial power delivery in 2030.
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Meta isn’t the only one looking to space to meet its data center needs. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others have discussed putting the computing facilities themselves in orbit.
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For Meta, the move is part of a massive AI spending spree. The company is allocating hundreds of billions of dollars to secure the energy, infrastructure and computing capacity needed to support its artificial intelligence plans. It hopes that Overview Energy will offer it access to clean, “uninterrupted energy,” Nat Sahlstrom, Meta’s vice president of energy and sustainability, said in a statement.
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Meta’s AI ambitions have relied heavily on natural gas, which it has viewed as a more consistent and reliable form of energy than some cleaner sources. The company is supporting the development of 10 new gas-fired plants for its biggest AI data center campus, which it is currently building in rural Louisiana.
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Overview Energy, based in northern Virginia, is capitalizing on the idea that the sun never sets in space. If its efforts to collect continuous energy and beam it back to receivers on Earth are successful, it could provide a clean energy solution that avoids some of the limitations of terrestrial solar panels. Their performance varies based on weather, time of day and the season.
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