{"text":[[{"start":11.65,"text":"Venture capitalists are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into start-ups planning to launch AI systems into space, after billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Nvidia chief Jensen Huang poured rocket fuel on the idea in recent weeks. "}],[{"start":29.33,"text":"Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’s Blue Origin are both working on projects to launch AI data centres made up of thousands of satellites into orbit, while Nvidia this month unveiled new AI chips designed to work in space. "}],[{"start":46.73,"text":"That has helped drive investor interest in US start-ups Starcloud and Aetherflux, which are also developing solar-powered orbital AI data centres. "}],[{"start":56.919999999999995,"text":"The companies’ planned systems would handle requests sent from terrestrial users to AI apps such as ChatGPT or Claude Code, beaming the responses back to Earth. In the coming years, advocates believe AI computers in space could operate more cheaply than comparable systems on Earth. "}],[{"start":77.16,"text":"Starcloud said on Monday it had raised $170mn from investors including Benchmark and EQT Ventures. The deal values the two-year-old start-up at $1.1bn, including the new capital. "}],[{"start":93.14999999999999,"text":"“By moving AI compute to space, we unlock access to unlimited solar power and completely remove the energy bottleneck,” said Philip Johnston, Starcloud’s co-founder and chief executive. “This funding allows us to rapidly scale our orbital infrastructure and meet the massive commercial demand for sustainable AI compute.”"}],[{"start":116.35,"text":"Chetan Puttagunta, a partner at Benchmark who is joining Starcloud’s board, said an acute shortage of energy on Earth to power ever-growing AI computing demands demonstrated a “pretty big market need for new ways to approach the problem”. "}],[{"start":135.24,"text":"“If you project out the future, this feels pretty on trend on where the world is going,” he said. "}],[{"start":141.72,"text":"That deal comes as California-based Aetherflux, which is led by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, is in discussions to raise as much as $300mn at a valuation of about $2bn, according to people familiar with the deal. Aetherflux, which is backed by venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures, declined to comment on the talks, which were previously reported by the Wall Street Journal. "}],[{"start":171.76,"text":"Musk has made orbital AI central to his pitch for SpaceX’s forthcoming initial public offering, after merging his AI start-up xAI into his rocket company last month. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have applied to the US Federal Communications Commission for permission to launch thousands of AI satellites, with Musk’s rocket company targeting a constellation of as many as 1mn units. "}],[{"start":199.5,"text":"After raising $3mn in its initial funding round, Starcloud has designed, built and in November launched its first satellite, becoming the first group to put into orbit an Nvidia H100 AI chip."}],[{"start":214.6,"text":"“The fact that such a small team with so little capital actually got it to work was thoroughly impressive to us,” said Puttagunta. "}],[{"start":224.07999999999998,"text":"Starcloud has scheduled its second launch for later this year, while Aetherflux has said it plans to launch its first commercial AI data centre early in 2027. Both companies are likely to rely on SpaceX to launch their satellites. "}],[{"start":240.27999999999997,"text":"“[SpaceX] are tightly vertically integrated and that will translate to benefits for them,” Bhatt told the FT last month. “But there is enough demand for multiple companies to be competitive in this space.”"}],[{"start":255.11999999999998,"text":"Despite Nvidia’s debut of its Space-1 Vera Rubin Module at its GTC event earlier this month, Huang has cautioned that running AI in a vacuum poses technical challenges that will “take years” to solve. "}],[{"start":270.82,"text":"“Obviously there’s a lot of energy in space,” he said on a recent episode of the All-In podcast. “The challenge of course is cooling — you can’t take advantage of conduction or convection. You can only use radiation. Radiation requires very large surfaces.” "}],[{"start":289.11,"text":"He added: “That’s not an impossible thing to solve. There’s a lot of space in space.” "}],[{"start":306.72,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1774945091_3937.mp3"}