Original Title: "After Just Launching the NVIDIA AI Server into Space, This Space Startup is Eyeing Bitcoin Mining"
Original Author: Nancy, PANews
The next battleground for AI computing power is extending into space, gradually becoming a new direction for commercial narrative.
Following the successful launch of the first space AI server, a space computing startup has recently planned to send Bitcoin mining into outer space.
Plans to Mine Bitcoin in Space This Year, Symbolic Significance May Exceed Actual Value
Having moved past the chip and model competition in the first half, the competition for AI computing power has quietly shifted towards the battle for energy. Electricity, as the core resource in this competition, is rapidly becoming a scarce resource in the global computing power contest. This shift not only alters the industry landscape but also directly reconstructs the cost structure of the Bitcoin mining industry.
In particular, once-stable Bitcoin miners are now turning towards the AI computing power track. This transformation is driven by survival pressures from Bitcoin halving, increasing competition, rising energy costs, and the huge opportunities presented by the AI narrative.
As the profitability of Bitcoin mining faces compression from the global energy competition, Starcloud has proposed a bold plan to move Bitcoin mining to space.
Recently, in an interview with HyperChange, Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston revealed that the company is currently focused on existing space computing power business while also having plans for Bitcoin mining. Starcloud will equip some ASIC hardware specifically designed for Bitcoin mining on the Starcloud-2 satellite, which is set to launch later in 2026. If successful, Starcloud will become the world's first spacecraft to mine Bitcoin in space.
Johnston believes that space has multiple natural advantages over Earth. Firstly, space has an unlimited continuous supply of solar energy, which is more stable and cheaper than renewable energy on Earth; at the same time, the environment in space is superior. Although the temperature difference and radiation are extreme, they can significantly reduce the heat dissipation energy consumption of hardware, lowering cooling costs and the burden of equipment maintenance. Most importantly, Bitcoin mining in space can avoid the increasingly tight energy bottlenecks, grid limitations, and regulatory pressures on Earth. Currently, about 20GW of electricity on Earth is used for Bitcoin mining, and such massive electricity consumption is no longer feasible on the ground. However, in space, utilizing solar energy to obtain cheap energy will provide a new solution for Bitcoin mining.
Johnston also pointed out that the cost of Bitcoin mining equipment typically ranges from $600 to several thousand dollars, far less than NVIDIA's enterprise-grade GPUs (usually over $30,000). This makes the economics of space Bitcoin mining highly attractive.
Starcloud views Bitcoin mining in space as a "business of the future," leveraging solar energy in space to obtain cheap energy, and frankly states that this is one of the reasons it, along with other companies (including SpaceX), is constructing data centers in space. Space mining can not only significantly reduce costs but also offer a new resource acquisition model for the global computing power market.
The concept of space mining is not new. Last year, Intercosmic Energy also stated that it was studying Bitcoin mining in space.
However, mining Bitcoin in space still faces many challenges. Johnston also admitted that the economics of Bitcoin mining in space remain unstable. Currently, Bitcoin ASIC devices can operate on any cheap energy source, and as new devices are continuously introduced, the profitability of mining equipment may rapidly decline.
Moreover, although launch costs have been decreasing year by year, sending hardware into space remains an expensive task. Compared to ground mining farms, the startup and maintenance costs of space mining are still high, including expenses for launches, spacecraft integration, satellite communication, equipment upgrades, and more.
More troubling is that the space environment poses extremely harsh requirements on hardware. Bitcoin mining ASIC devices must operate stably under extreme conditions such as high radiation and extreme temperature variations, which pose severe challenges to the performance and lifespan of the equipment. Maintenance and upgrading of the equipment will also become a major challenge, as any malfunction significantly increases the cost and difficulty of repairing and replacing hardware.
Previously, many organizations in the cryptocurrency space have been exploring bringing blockchain business into space. For example, the veteran company Blockstream in the Bitcoin community has been renting multiple geostationary satellites since 2017 to broadcast Bitcoin blockchain data globally for free. Even in the event of a large-scale internet outage (such as from natural disasters or human blockades), as long as you have a small satellite dish (receiver), you can synchronize the Bitcoin ledger and complete transactions. SpaceChain installed the first commercial Ethereum node on the International Space Station (ISS) as early as 2019. Earlier this year, a new project focused on space commerce, Spacecoin, also attracted market attention by enabling cryptocurrency payment settlements through a satellite network.
Therefore, in space mining, short-term investments may far exceed returns, and currently, it carries more symbolic significance or serves as a narrative tool for this startup to attract market attention.
For the First Time in Human History, NVIDIA AI Server Sent to Space
Founded in 2024, Starcloud, formerly Lumen Orbit, has already emerged in the global tech sphere as one of the first companies to propose building data centers in space.
As a member of NVIDIA's accelerator program, as well as a participant in Y Combinator and Google Cloud incubator projects, Starcloud is not simply moving data centers to space; its goal is to utilize the unique resources of the space environment to build infrastructure capable of supporting AI calculations and large-scale computing.
Currently, Starcloud has completed at least $21 million in financing, supported by well-known investment institutions such as NFX, Y Combinator, FUSE, Soma Capital, a16z, and Sequoia Capital.
Starcloud has secured a place in the space AI computing power competition. Last November, Starcloud completed the first-ever large model training in space orbit by launching its Starcloud-1 satellite via SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, sending NVIDIA H100 GPUs into Earth orbit, and successfully running Google's open-source AI large model Gemma, transmitting the first message from space, "Hello, Earthlings!"
At the time, Philip Johnston stated, that space AI is not just a gimmick, and the company aims to achieve a tenfold reduction in energy costs for orbital data centers compared to ground data centers.
After achieving initial success, Starcloud's ambitions have not stopped. Recently, the company submitted an application to the FCC planning to deploy a massive constellation of 88,000 satellites to build a distributed, space-based AI training and cloud computing platform. However, turning this vision into reality is fraught with enormous challenges. From funding scale, regulatory approvals, launch capacity, orbital resource allocation to operational sustainability, this is not just a commercial competition; it's a systematic engineering challenge, with every step filled with uncertainty and complexity.
Not just Starcloud, as the demand for computing resources in the AI industry continues to grow, more tech companies are seeking new sources of computing power, and space is gradually becoming the focal point of this competition. For example, Google officially launched the solar catcher project at the end of last year, announcing plans to send its self-developed TPU AI chips into space to build a prototype of a solar-powered space data center; not long ago, SpaceX, under Elon Musk, submitted an application to deploy one million satellites in Earth orbit to construct orbital data centers; recently, data storage and disaster recovery company Lonestar partnered with semiconductor and storage company Phiso to launch a set of data center infrastructure bound for the Moon via SpaceX rockets.
As the concept of space data centers transitions from science fiction to reality, a new arms race in infrastructure is unfolding. According to Musk's predictions, in five years, the annual increase in space AI computing power will reach hundreds of gigawatts; every year, the AI computing power sent to space will exceed the historical cumulative total of all AI on Earth.
By then, the main battleground for AI computing power competition will truly shift to space. In the coming years, we will see more commercial explorations and technological innovations, and space mining may just be one of the stepping stones in this wave.
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