Author: Mike Nova

• Google’s latest moonshot research project wants to send data centers to space.
• CEO Sundar Pichai is the latest tech executive to bet on the idea during the AI race.
• Pichai said he hopes Google can send one of its custom chips to space by 2027.

Tech CEOs can’t stop talking about data centers in space.

“Obviously, it’s a moonshot,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on the “Google AI: Release Notes” podcast this week.

He acknowledged that the notion seems “crazy” today, but “when you truly step back and envision the amount of compute we’re going to need, it starts making sense and it’s a matter of time.”

Pichai was referring to Project Suncatcher, a new long-term research bet that Google announced in November. The goal of Project Suncatcher is to “one day scale machine learning in space,” according to a company blog post.

The Google CEO didn’t offer much in the way of details, except that “in 2027, hopefully we’ll have a TPU somewhere in space,” he said, referring to the company’s custom AI chip.

“Maybe we’ll meet a Tesla Roadster,” he quipped.

Pichai was referring to the time when Elon Musk hitched his old Tesla Roadster onto a SpaceX rocket and blasted it into orbit with a spacesuit-clad dummy perched in the driver’s seat. Launched in 2018, the roadster was still in deep space as of earlier this year, when astronomers mistook it for an asteroid.

That Roadster stunt doesn’t begin to compare with the outer space ambitions of Musk and other tech titans in the age of AI.

“Starship should be able to deliver around 300 GW per year of solar-powered AI satellites to orbit, maybe 500 GW. The ‘per year’ part is what makes this such a big deal,” Musk wrote in an X post earlier this month.

The numbers Musk is talking about represent an unprecedented amount of electric capacity. Global data center capacity is currently 59 gigawatts here on Earth, Goldman Sachs said earlier this year.

Global electricity demand is on track to double by 2050, in part due to the race to build AI data centers. In the US, data centers are the biggest driver of the surging demand that is straining the country’s power grid.

Musk, Pichai, and other tech leaders — Jeff Bezos is predicting that data centers will go to space in the next 10 to 20 years — know that the amount of demand coming from AI data centers might not be tenable.

“I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told comedian and podcaster Theo Von in a July interview. “But I don’t know, because maybe we put them in space. Like maybe we build a big Dyson sphere on the solar system and say, ‘Hey, it actually makes no sense to put these on Earth.'”

It’s a question that could explain why some of tech leaders seem so eager to send data centers to space, where, as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff pointed out in a recent tweet, there is “continuous solar and no batteries needed” for power and cooling.

“The lowest cost place for data centers is space,” Benioff wrote in a post on X earlier this month, referring to a video clip of Musk touting the benefits of orbital AI at the US-Saudi Investment Forum earlier this month.

• Gilen Chan and Gene Preudhomme, both 63, started a podcast interviewing retirees around the world.
• The couple didn’t know where to retire, so they asked others to share their stories.
• Over five years later, their podcast has grown steadily and now features over 200 episodes.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gilen Chan and Gene Preudhomme, both 63 and retired lawyers, who are the creators and hosts of the “Retire There with Gil & Gene” podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s been over five years since we started our podcast.

In early 2020, we were both thinking about retirement and knew we wanted to leave Brooklyn, where we’d raised our son and lived for many years.

The idea of being surrounded by nature appealed to us, so we began considering a move to a different state. We decided to take a trip to explore our options and headed to Winter Park in Florida. It was nice, but we knew right away that it wasn’t for us.

We returned to New York, wondering where our next scouting trip would take us. However, the pandemic struck a few weeks later. All travel had stopped, and we found ourselves stuck, just like everyone else.

We came up with the idea of starting a podcast about where to retire. We wanted a show where we could interview people across the country and hear their stories.

Starting our own podcast

We reached out to family, friends, and their networks, and we were lucky to find people willing to share their experiences. We knew that new podcasts often launch with several episodes, so we recorded four right away.

Finding guests, however, has remained one of the most challenging aspects of producing the show. Just as our pool of interviewees from our initial circle began to run dry, a friend introduced us to someone who had retired in Paris. We interviewed him, and he became our first international guest.

When we started the podcast, we were a little intimidated. At the time, we assumed most podcasters were younger than we were. But since we’re both fairly tech-savvy, we figured if they could do it, so could we.

When we were living in Brooklyn, we recorded from our basement, which we’d soundproofed. Each conversation lasts about an hour to an hour and a half, and can take between four to five hours to edit.

Our podcast has over 200 episodes so far, and we’ve learned that the best guests are also willing to admit when things have not gone as planned. Some have shared that while they love a place for vacation, living there long-term simply does not feel right for them.

We’ve had some memorable guests through the years, including an American retiree who wanted to move to Costa Rica while his wife wasn’t so sure.

To change her mind, he hired a local expert to take her on a solo trip around Costa Rica for two months. When she returned, she told her husband she couldn’t wait to move there. That was a good one.

We recently received a sponsorship. It’s not a large amount, but it covers the cost of the services we use, like our recording software subscription, editing software, and our website.

Broadening our perspectives

Interacting with so many people about their retirement experiences has shaped the way we think about our own, especially after we began speaking with those who chose to live internationally.

It broadened our perspective and inspired us to think about spending part of our retirement overseas.

We’re now based in Pennsylvania. Our plan is to find a home here — which we’re still searching for — and spend about three months each year living abroad, choosing one city at a time and exploring from there.

Before the podcast, we would’ve never considered living abroad ourselves. We were both poor growing up, and the thought never crossed our minds. But then we met ordinary folks who seemed just like us who’d made it happen.

We realized that a flight from New York to California takes about six hours, and a flight to Europe can take about the same amount of time. Psychologically, it suddenly didn’t feel so far away.

In the end, we felt our lives could be so much richer if we could give it a try. Our son, who we’re very close to, lives in Rhode Island, so we aren’t ready to make the leap to live permanently abroad just yet. That’s why we’re going to start small.

In the countries we’ve visited, including France, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, we’ve enjoyed every one

What retirement has really taught us is that we’re now at a stage where we feel safe in knowing who we are. Traveling has only expanded our minds.

Do you have a story to share about relocating to a new city? Contact this reporter at agoh@businessinsider.com.