Why does Elon Musk want to put AI data centers in space?

A proposed merger between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI, reported exclusively by Reuters ⁠on Thursday, could give fresh momentum to Musk’s plan to launch satellite data centers into orbit as he battles for supremacy in the rapidly escalating AI race against tech giants like Alphabet’s Google, Meta and OpenAI.

Here is what we know about space-based AI computing: