Masayoshi Son refutes Elon Musk: Space data centers are "meaningless," the AI race will be decided on Earth.

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As the AI infrastructure boom extends to “space orbit computing centers,” Masayoshi Son bluntly poured cold water on the idea.

On June 23, according to Bloomberg, at SoftBank’s annual shareholders meeting for its mobile business, Masayoshi Son stated that the idea of space data centers proposed by Elon Musk and others is “of little significance” and that the outcome of AI competition will largely be determined by computing resources on Earth, not by future orbit-based computing facilities.

This remark directly responds to the recent surge in market discussions about “space computing power.” Companies including SpaceX and Blue Origin are exploring launching orbital data centers to bypass energy and land constraints on the ground. However, Masayoshi Son believes this concept has clear economic and engineering bottlenecks.

Launch costs, in-orbit maintenance, and communication delays: challenges far more severe than electricity bills

Masayoshi Son pointed out that although space data centers may lower electricity costs, electricity accounts for only a small portion of overall operating expenses, while hardware capital expenditures—such as chips—are the real cost drivers; furthermore, launch and transportation costs, the difficulty of in-orbit maintenance, and communication delays will significantly erode any theoretical energy advantage. Given current technology and cost structures, these trade-offs make space data centers lack realistic competitiveness.

In contrast, Masayoshi Son has anchored SoftBank’s strategic focus on building ground-based AI infrastructure, emphasizing that the company will continue to build a “powerful data center capability” and systematically lay out a global computing power network. Previous market information indicates he has already committed about $65 billion to OpenAI-related projects and plans additional AI infrastructure investments amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars globally. Meanwhile, SoftBank’s communications business is also accelerating its expansion, aiming to enter the US “neocloud” and data center energy storage battery markets, with related businesses expected to launch within the year.

Regarding the AI industry’s pace, Masayoshi Son predicts that the industry competition will enter a decisive phase “in the coming years,” rather than a gradual evolution over a decade. "First movers will gain an edge", and now is the key window to decide the computing power landscape and the ecological map. Nevertheless, he believes the AI industry is still in an early stage, with major players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google still having “tenfold or even hundredfold” growth potential. As competition heats up, the development space remains vast.

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