Self-assembling data centers in space are becoming reality as Rendezvous Robotics partners with Starcloud — Elon Musk chimes in that 'SpaceX will be doing this'

Starcloud is already launching an AI-equipped satellite featuring an Nvidia H100 GPU into space next month. Still, it plans to build a 5-gigawatt data center eventually, and Rendezvous Robotics can be key to achieving that. Speaking to Ars Technica, co-founder Phil Frank said, "Our mission is to build things that are going to be useful in space."

Data centers have become the new gold rush in the wake of the AI boom, with proponents looking to expand compute at an exponential pace that outstrips our ability to build them. They also require massive amounts of energy and cooling, potentially with detrimental effects on our environment, which we only have one of. Space, on the other hand, is virtually infinite with a free fusion reactor at the center of our solar system that never shuts down—starting to sound like a plan, right? Lots of other companies think so, too, and are convening to explore this landmark opportunity.

The challenge at hand is more difficult than it might seem because, unlike satellites or telescopes, a data center is not inherently mobile. Historically, all our efforts have been focused on building them on land with sprawling construction sites that aren't feasible outside our atmosphere. Deploying a data center in space, therefore, requires ingenuity and efficiency on a scale never sought before — this is where Rendezvous Robotics can help. The space construction firm was born at MIT last year and emerged from stealth this September with a pre-seed round.

Fast forward a few months, and now, it has just signed an agreement with Starcloud, which itself is partnered with Nvidia, to explore data center opportunities in space. All three companies are part of a coalition rethinking how computing facilities can work in a new era.

Rendezvous's flagship product is a tile-based autonomous module system that can assemble itself. Essentially, tiles with their own componentry, like battery cells, processors, and more, that use electromagnets to unfurl after being deployed as a payload from a spacecraft. What you see in the picture above are the tiles stacked on top of each other, ready to separate from the rocket and build themselves out. This tech is based on MIT Media Lab's Project TESSERAE, whose architect, Ariel Ekblaw, is one of the founders of Rendezvous Robotics. NASA has already tested TESSERAE, but the founders intend to turn it into a commercial venture, selling the technology to space architecture firms (such as Starcloud).

Joe Landon, the last of three co-founders, clarified that "you have to either send a person with a wrench to space to assemble, use a robotic arm and plan out every movement of that arm, or design a complicated origami folding mechanical system, which limits how big you can build." Those three techniques are what Rendezvous's work can replace, and the tech is designed to be scalable to huge sizes, perfect for the extraterrestrial dreams of AI GPUs humming alongside our satellites. As part of this agreement, Starcloud and Rendezvous will work together to tailor the tiles for the 5-gigawatt data center specifically.

Speaking of which, Starcloud has said its data center will use "super-large solar and cooling panels approximately 4 kilometers in width and length," which are astronomically larger than anything humans have built before. Ars Technica calculated that the International Space Station's solar arrays — the largest ever deployed in space — are only 0.005% the size of what Starcloud is planning to build. This is why autonomous assembly becomes a necessity; at this scale, conventional techniques (as if anything space-related were typical) lag eons behind, and AI money doesn't stop for anything.

You can see Elon Musk's response to the original coverage above, claiming that Starlink's V3 satellites "will be doing this," and it seems to be relatively easy, too. The currently in-orbit V2 satellites cap out at a maximum data transmission rate of 100 Gbps, which the upcoming V3 satellites will increase to 1 Tbps. Through Starlink, SpaceX has already demonstrated it can deliver high-speed internet to even remote parts of the globe, so it's not entirely unprecedented that hyperscale data centers are on the world's richest person's mind. Unlike Starcloud and Rendezvous Robotics, though, we'll need more details here before speculating on what the future holds.

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