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Are orbital data centers all hype, or an actual AI infrastructure solution? l Equity Podcast

Tech companies are racing to build data centers in space, pitching orbital compute as the next frontier for AI infrastructure, even as the technical and economic realities remain far from clear. Add in OpenAI’s massive $122 billion round and Bluesky’s latest AI backlash, and the message is clear: The future of AI is being shaped…

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Tech companies are racing to build data centers in space, pitching orbital compute as the next frontier for AI infrastructure, even as the technical and economic realities remain far from clear. Add in OpenAI’s massive $122 billion round and Bluesky’s latest AI backlash, and the message is clear: The future of AI is being shaped as much by ambition and hype as it is by real-world constraints.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane unpack these massive capital bets, user backlash, and off-world compute plans along with Whoop’s major valuation and the literal downfall of robot Olaf.

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:20 A humanoid Olaf robot collapses at Disneyland Paris
03:30 OpenAI raises $122B at an $852B valuation
11:30 Whoop lands $575M and bets big on wearable data
18:50 The risks (and value) of personal health data
23:00 Bluesky’s AI feed builder sparks backlash
30:00 Can Bluesky keep growing — and compete with X?
36:30 The race to build data centers in space
44:30 SpaceX, Starlink, and the business of orbital compute
49:30 Outro

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5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. @عليموحان-س5ع

    April 3, 2026 at 12:42 pm

    علي موحان💞💛💞💛💖💛💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💛💖💖💖

  2. @TheRoyL

    April 4, 2026 at 12:59 am

    OpenAI products dont seem like they are built for productivity, or accuracy.

    They’ll get people addicted to eco chambers without needing the other users. Like Facebook with better AI.

    I think they have the same machine as Anthropic but they don’t sell the same product.

    When you need the right answer and not just someone to support you through your mistakes or bias OpenAI is near useless.

  3. @raydosson2025

    April 4, 2026 at 2:26 am

    The chapters and time stamps for the later topics are messed up btw

  4. @eatmanyzoos

    April 4, 2026 at 3:06 am

    the solution is to jump ship on this giant scam before its too late

  5. @fenrisgyra3750

    April 5, 2026 at 10:05 pm

    Bruh the orbital data center conversation is doing a lot of work to avoid the more boring question which is whether the terrestrial infrastructure we already have is even close to optimized. Across the operations we support from Southeast Asia to West Africa to Latin America the constraint is almost never compute location. It is power stability, latency management, and skilled people who can keep pipelines running when conditions get unpredictable. Putting servers in orbit does not solve any of that. It just moves the problem somewhere harder to reach.

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Science & Technology

Why Snowflake is no longer just a data warehouse

Snowflake is betting that the future of AI isn’t just analyzing data, it’s acting on it. That means a shift away from chatbots and toward autonomous agents that can actually get work done. And Snowflake is reorganizing fast to keep up, from shipping hundreds of AI features to restructuring teams along the way. On this…

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Snowflake is betting that the future of AI isn’t just analyzing data, it’s acting on it. That means a shift away from chatbots and toward autonomous agents that can actually get work done. And Snowflake is reorganizing fast to keep up, from shipping hundreds of AI features to restructuring teams along the way.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to unpack the company’s transformation and what it signals about where AI is headed next.

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:17 Snowflake’s AI shift and agentic future
01:45 Why 2026 marks the end of chatbots
04:09 Cortex Code, Snowflake Intelligence, and new products
06:09 Who benefits: non-technical users & enterprises
07:35 Adoption challenges and why AI pilots fail
12:11 How AI is reshaping jobs and skills
14:39 Layoffs, automation, and the future of documentation
18:37 Snowflake’s evolution into an AI platform
21:04 Competition: Databricks, hyperscalers, and AI giants
25:01 Outro

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Popular Science

The Experiment That Tried to Weigh the Human Soul

It’s a little complicated to weigh a dying person on a hospital bed, but that didn’t deter Duncan MacDougall. In the early 20th century, MacDougall’s unique bed-scale detected that 21 grams left the human body at the moment of death. He had finally discovered it: the weigh of the human soul … or so he…

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It’s a little complicated to weigh a dying person on a hospital bed, but that didn’t deter Duncan MacDougall. In the early 20th century, MacDougall’s unique bed-scale detected that 21 grams left the human body at the moment of death.

He had finally discovered it: the weigh of the human soul … or so he thought.

Read more about the cultural legacy of MacDougall’s flawed but influential experiment:

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NASA’s Artemis II Moon Flyby Livestream

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Watch the excitement as NASA sends four astronauts on a historic mission to the moon, potentially farther into space than any humans have ever traveled.

Follow CNET’s Live Blog at CNET.com
NASA Artemis II Day 6: Monday Is Moon Flyby Day

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