Space data center startup Starcloud is running an AI model in space.

One month after the company launched a satellite with an Nvidia H100 GPU on board, Starcloud is now running and querying responses from Google's Gemma large language model (LLM).

According to a report from CNBC, this is the first time an LLM has been run on a high-powered Nvidia GPU in space.

Starcloud's CEO, Philip Johnston, told CNBC that the operation of Gemma is "proof" that the concept of data centers in space can work. "This very powerful, very parameter-dense model is living on our satellite. We can query it, and it will respond in the same way that when you query a chat from a database on Earth, it will give you a very sophisticated response. We can do that with our satellite.”

The satellite being used for Gemma is Starcloud-1, which was launched primarily as a test satellite. Starcloud has said, however, that should testing go as planned, it will launch significantly larger data centers in space.

Competition is heating up

The concept of 'data centers in space' has been receiving growing interest from several companies, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

Bezos, in October, said that he believes there will be gigawatt data centers in space in 10+ years. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Blue Origin has actually been working on the technology necessary for more than a year, citing a person familiar with the matter. Blue Origin declined to comment to WSJ.

Meanwhile, in November, Elon Musk revealed that SpaceX was also looking to deploy data centers in space, and has since been reported to be planning an initial public offering to raise more than $30bn to pursue the project.

In addition, Google CEO Eric Schmidt this year said that he acquired rocket company Relativity Space to put data centers in orbit, and in November announced 'Project Suncatcher,' a long-term plan to put terawatts of compute in space.

While these are some of the largest names in the sector, other companies are also shooting their shot. A number of other companies are considering data centers in space, including Axiom Space, NTT, Ramon.Space, and Sophia Space, to name but a few.