SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son said on June 23 that building data centres in space, as Elon Musk has proposed, offers little advantage and predicted the AI race will be won by compute capacity on Earth [1, 2, 3, 4]. He made the remarks during SoftBank’s annual shareholder meeting for its mobile unit [1, 2, 3, 4].
Son acknowledged the potential benefit of orbital data centres to slash electricity costs, but pointed out electricity is only a small part of data centre operating expenses compared to costly hardware such as chips [1, 2, 3, 4]. He said the power cost savings would be offset by higher transport fees, greater maintenance challenges, and communication delays inherent in space operations [1, 2, 3, 4].
“In the battle for AI, the next few years will be far more important than what might happen a decade or so from now,” Son said, emphasizing the urgency of near-term advances [1]. He added, “He who strikes first wins,” underscoring SoftBank’s strategic focus on immediate competitive moves in AI [1].
While calling Musk a “remarkable agent of change,” Son said SoftBank will concentrate on building “formidable” data centre capacity on Earth rather than pursuing orbital infrastructure [1]. SoftBank has committed about US$65 billion to OpenAI and plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in data centres and related infrastructure worldwide [1, 2, 3, 4].
The AI competition remains intense, with significant room for growth for companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic PBC, and Google. Son noted AI is still early-stage with potential for ten-fold to hundred-fold expansion [1, 2, 3, 4].
SoftBank’s telecommunications unit is preparing to enter the neocloud business and data centre storage battery markets in the US, with a neocloud launch planned in Japan for 2026 [1, 2, 3, 4].
