The CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) shared his skepticism over SpaceX plans to deploy as many as a million orbital data centers in the coming years.

Speaking at the Cisco AI Summit, in comments first reported by Reuters, Matt Garman called the idea "just not economical."

The head of the world's largest cloud company added: "There are not enough rockets to launch a million satellites yet, so we're, like, pretty far from that. If you think about the cost of getting a payload in space today, it's massive."

SpaceX's plans rely on its upcoming Starship super heavy-lift rocket to first reliably reach orbit, and then achieve reusability, which could dramatically reduce launch costs. However, it is behind schedule, and reusability could take years to crack.

Google's own research for its Project Suncatcher experiment to put TPUs in space suggested that launch prices could fall to $200/kg by 2035, which would make spacecraft lifetime costs roughly comparable to data center energy costs on Earth.

However, hitting that 2035 goal requires Starship to not only achieve reusability but also drive down costs by rapidly increasing the launch schedule to around 180 Starship launches a year.

SpaceX achieved a record 165 Falcon 9 and Heavy launches in 2025, shy of its own goal of 180. This week, the company paused flights on Falcon 9 due to an unspecified issue experienced by its second stage during a successful deployment of 25 Starlink satellites.

Amazon founder and CEO of rival rocket company Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, also believes that data centers will ultimately end up in space, but said that it will happen in the "next couple of decades."

Both Amazon and Blue Origin are developing low Earth Orbit communication satellite constellations.

Despite these challenges, SpaceX's CEO, Elon Musk, has set a characteristically optimistic timeline for orbital data centers, claiming that “within two to three years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.” He has made several pronouncements in the past with wildly inaccurate timelines.

As part of the drive to build data centers in orbit, SpaceX this week announced plans to merge with Musk's loss-making generative AI business xAI. The combined business is expected to go public around Musk's birthday this summer, with a stated goal of raising funds for the orbital data center effort.