Extraterrestrial data centers are just on the horizon. Soon, an AI-equipped satellite from Starcloud, a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for startups, will orbit the Earth.

It's a large step toward the startup's ultimate goal to bring state-of-the-art data centers to outer space. This can be a part of the solution to address challenges faced by rising AI demands, including energy consumption and cooling requirements for data centers on Earth.

"In space, you get almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy," said Philip Johnston, cofounder and CEO of the startup, which is based in Redmond, Washington. "The only cost on the environment will be on the launch, then there will be 10x carbon-dioxide savings over the life of the data center compared with powering the data center terrestrially on Earth."