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.
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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
@عليموحان-س5ع
April 3, 2026 at 12:42 pm
علي موحان💞💛💞💛💖💛💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💖💛💛💖💖💖
@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.
@raydosson2025
April 4, 2026 at 2:26 am
The chapters and time stamps for the later topics are messed up btw
@eatmanyzoos
April 4, 2026 at 3:06 am
the solution is to jump ship on this giant scam before its too late
@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.