Google is in discussions with SpaceX regarding its orbital data center initiative, Project Suncatcher.

The conversations pertain to SpaceX providing rocket launch services to Google, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

With the company seeking to launch two prototype satellites this year, it is in discussion with launch companies, including SpaceX, which has experience with frequent launches and is itself targeting space-based data centers.

The cloud and search giant ultimately aims to launch some 81 satellites spanning a 1km radius to create an in-orbit compute cluster, which will have Google's customer Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) on board.

Planet Labs is the satellite manufacturer for the effort.

Google previously published a pre-print paper on Project Suncatcher that laid out its hopes for the effort, with the company theorizing "a scalable compute system for machine learning in space, using fleets of satellites equipped with solar arrays, inter-satellite links using free-space optics, and Google tensor processing unit (TPU) accelerator chips."

Google was an early investor in SpaceX, and at the end of 2025 held a 6.1 percent stake.

Several organizations are exploring the concept of in-orbit or 'space data centers.'

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and the owner of Blue Origin, said in late 2025 that there will be gigawatt data centers in space in more than 10 years, while former Google CEO Eric Schmidt this year said that he acquired rocket company Relativity Space to put data centers in orbit.

Other companies are seeking to deploy data centers in space, including Axiom Space, NTT, Ramon.Space, and Sophia Space, to name but a few. Earlier this week, Aetherflux rebranded as Cowboy Space Corporation and announced plans to pursue “vertically integrated orbital data centers and rockets."