Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp says it’s only a matter of time before some of the biggest data centers leave Earth entirely.
“Oh, it’s going to happen for sure in our life,” Limp told Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid.
Space, he noted, offers nearly limitless solar energy and the ability to move information at high speeds via laser-based links. The idea is to take the most power-hungry infrastructure, put it above the atmosphere, and then beam the data back down.
“Over the next five to 10 years, you’re going to see that come to fruition for sure,” he said.
The privately held aerospace company is owned by Jeff Bezos, who sells roughly $1 billion in Amazon (AMZN) stock annually to fund it.
Year to date, Amazon’s stock is up nearly 5%, but it trails the S&P 500 (^GSPC), which has gained about 14% during the same period.
The tech giant has been racing to expand artificial intelligence-related computing power, signing billion-dollar partnerships with Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) and OpenAI (OPAI.PVT).
The outcome of such deals still has investors hypersensitive to any commentary regarding future data center capacity and grid constraints, especially as Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), and Google (GOOG) continue announcing record AI infrastructure spending.
Blue Origin’s vision adds a more radical — if speculative — twist to the AI energy crunch investors have been tracking.
Limp cautioned that orbital data centers won’t resemble the sprawling ground facilities in Northern Virginia or central Ohio. Servers will need new cooling systems because temperatures in space swing from freezing to blistering, depending on sunlight. And the structures themselves will look more like a linked spacecraft than concrete warehouses.
But in his view, the basic engineering — the solar power, laser communications, and modular satellites — is already understood.
His comments come on the heels of a high-profile win for Blue Origin last week. The company’s New Glenn rocket had a successful second test flight, reaching two milestones. It launched NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes toward Mars and, for the first time, landed its orbital-class booster intact on an Atlantic drone ship, joining Elon Musk’s SpaceX as the only companies to do so.
Limp called the launch a “watershed moment” for the company, one that required “a huge amount of simulations.”
Even with the successful flight, the stakes are rising quickly. In 2026 and 2027, New Glenn is slated to haul cargo to the Moon, put new satellite hardware into orbit, and support the build-out of Amazon’s Leo broadband constellation.