by XU Meihui

A Shanghai lawmaker has urged the city to speed up research and industrial deployment of space-based computing, arguing that orbital data processing could help ease rising energy and cooling constraints as artificial intelligence expands rapidly.

Speaking during this year's Shanghai Two Sessions, JI Xinhu, a deputy to the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress and chief executive of cloud services provider UCloud Technology, said Shanghai should position itself early in the emerging field as global competition intensifies.

Ji said Shanghai already has much of the underlying aerospace and computing infrastructure in place, including satellite manufacturing, launch capabilities, inter-satellite communications and data facilities.

In an interview with Jiemian News, Ji said the AI boom has driven companies to deploy growing numbers of high-performance chips, sharply increasing electricity use and cooling demand at ground-based data centers.

"In space, there are natural advantages," he said, citing continuous access to solar energy and more efficient heat dissipation for densely packed computing hardware.

Ji said the bigger shift lies in moving data processing from the ground to orbit, replacing the traditional "sense in space, compute on the ground" model.

Processing data directly in orbit could cut response times from hours to minutes or even seconds, with potential applications in disaster early warning, remote sensing and AI training, he said.

Globally, space-based computing is moving beyond early-stage technical validation and toward larger-scale deployment, as governments and companies explore ways to extend computing infrastructure beyond Earth.

Industry forecasts cited by Ji estimate the global space-based computing market will reach US$24.9 billion in 2026, with compound annual growth of more than 15 per cent over the following decade.

The sector has already drawn attention from major players. According to a January report by Reuters, SpaceX has applied to the US Federal Communications Commission to launch up to one million satellites as part of plans to build what it describes as an "orbital data center".

Within China, Shanghai is among the early movers, Ji said, but the city still faces gaps in spaceborne high-performance AI chips, in-orbit assembly and space–ground coordination, as well as a shortage of globally competitive anchor companies and specialized talent.

Ji said progress would depend on coordinated research and early in-orbit testing, alongside pilot applications in areas such as emergency management, weather services and smart transport. Integrating space-based computing with large AI models, he said, could make commercial use more viable by allowing data to be processed directly in orbit.