China Has Bet Everything On Putting AI Supercomputers In Space — And America Wasn't Ready

China has launched an ambitious national initiative to move AI supercomputers from Earth into space, addressing critical limitations of ground-based data centers including power consumption and cooling requirements. The Three-Body Computing Constellation, launched in May 2025, consists of 12 satellites with AI processors connected by laser links at 100 gigabits per second, with plans for over 1,000 satellites capable of 100 quintillion calculations per second. By November 2025, China successfully ran a full general-purpose AI model entirely in orbit, and in March 2026 launched Prometheus, the first commercial space-based cloud platform. This initiative is driven by China's five-year economic plan (2026-2030) and $8.4 billion in state credit, representing a strategic bet on space-based computing to achieve computational dominance.