Space-based data centres are the latest bold claim circulating in tech circles, and not everyone is buying into the vision being sold.
Elon Musk has pitched the idea of orbital data centres as part of what observers describe as an effort to drive up the stock price of his company SpaceX.
The proposal involves placing data centres in space rather than on the ground, a concept that has drawn significant scepticism from analysts and industry watchers.
Critics have drawn pointed comparisons between the orbital data centre pitch and Theranos, the now-collapsed company that once claimed to run hundreds of medical tests on a single drop of blood.
Theranos was founded by a 19-year-old college dropout and reached a staggering valuation of $9 billion before its claims were exposed as physically impossible.
The fundamental problem with Theranos was straightforward to anyone with relevant knowledge: you simply need more blood than a single drop to conduct hundreds of tests.
Plenty of people who did not quit college at 19 could have told you at the time that what Theranos said it could do was preposterous, and some of them did.
However, most people have little understanding of how blood testing actually works, and the promise of using far less blood had intuitive appeal since nobody particularly enjoys being poked with a needle.
That combination of technical ignorance and emotional appeal was enough to propel Theranos to its extraordinary valuation before it all inevitably collapsed into nothing.
The comparison to SpaceX’s orbital data centre ambitions is sharp and deliberate, suggesting the idea belongs in the same category of proposals that sound innovative but collapse under basic scrutiny.
Unlike the private investors who poured money into Theranos, public investors in SpaceX appear to be approaching the orbital data centre concept with considerably more caution.
The broader pattern here speaks to how grand technological claims can gain traction in markets and public discourse well before anyone has seriously examined whether they are physically or economically viable.
Both stories serve as reminders that a compelling narrative, delivered with enough confidence, can outpace basic due diligence for longer than it reasonably should.