ST sees orbiting datacentres as a possibility by 2029

“My wild guess as to when we could start to see, a relevant amount of orbital data centres in the sky, I would say three years from now would be maybe an interesting guess,” says Remi El-Ouazzane, President of the Microcontrollers, Digital ICs & RF Products Group at ST (pictured) and a member of ST’s Executive Committee.

El-Ouazzane put orbital data centres as an emerging LEO (Low Earth Orbit) service alongside broadband and direct-to-cell. He sees orbital data centres as a “possible future market” that could reach “relevant amounts” in about three years time.

ST’s LEO revenue grew to about $600 million in 2025 from about $175 million in 2021, and it is now close to $1 billion in 2026 and expected to rise to $3 billion by 2028.”We are just in the early innings of this market,” says El-Ouazzane.

ST has a ten-year record of supplying chips to Starlink for its satellites and terminals and has a 90% share of the Starlink market.

The EU is funding ASCEND a project led by Thales to demonstrate the technical feasibility and the environmental benefits of deploying thousands of tons of large capacity data centres in space utilising several hundreds of launches a year.

The estimated global market for space-based data centres could reach ~$39 billion by 2035 at a 67.4% CAGR.