SoftBank Group (OTC:SFTBY) founder Masayoshi Son has a blunt verdict on Elon Musk’s push to put AI data centers in orbit: the economics don’t work, and the AI race will be won on the ground.

Speaking today at a SoftBank shareholder meeting, Son argued that electricity is only a small fraction of data center costs, so the solar savings touted in space can’t offset launch, maintenance and latency.

He also framed it as a clock problem, saying orbital projects could take a decade while the AI war’s winner gets decided inside that same window.

Shedding heat in a vacuum is very difficult, and orbital-compute startup Starcloud’s own white paper implies a single megawatt of space-based servers would need a radiator roughly the size of a hockey rink.

Jeff Bezos recently called orbital data centers “very realistic” while telling CNBC that two-to-three-year timelines are “probably a little ambitious.”

The Market Is Betting On Earth Too

Traders agree the orbit story is distant.

On Kalshi, the odds that a single one-megawatt data center goes live in orbit sit at roughly 23% before 2031 and only about 38% even before 2035.

SpaceX stock has had a brutal week, and orbit has nothing to do with it.

SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) priced its first investment-grade bond this week, roughly $20 billion with top marks from all three rating agencies, and disclosed a $100.8 billion cash pile.

The stock fell anyway, shedding hundreds of billions from its mid-June peak before closing near $154 Monday and bouncing Tuesday.

Upcoming unlocks might have spooked shareholders.

SpaceX’s public float is just 4.2%, but insiders can sell up to 44% of all shares by early September. That would grow the float by roughly 900%, and the unlock dates hand speculators a calendar to trade against.

The real winner might be Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA). Son wants his data centers on the ground and Musk wants his in orbit, but the chips inside them come from the same place either way.

SoftBank itself sank about 10% Tuesday, swept up in a global AI-chip selloff that dragged Asian tech lower.

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