China firm outlines plan for space-based computing network for AI agents

by MA Yueran

Chinese commercial space company Adaspace Technology has unveiled detailed plans for what it says will be the world's first space-based computing network designed specifically to serve silicon-based AI agents, according to disclosures made at an industry seminar this week.

The project, known as the "Star Computing" program, was outlined on January 26 by Adaspace executive vice-president WANG Yabo at a space computing forum organized by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Jiemian News learned at the event.

The plan envisions a constellation of 2,800 computing satellites, aimed at supporting silicon-based AI agents operating across land, sea, air and space, including autonomous vehicles, drones and intelligent robots, as well as AI model inference and training.

While satellites have long carried onboard computing for navigation and data processing, Adaspace's proposal goes further by positioning a large low-Earth-orbit constellation as a shared computing platform intended to run AI workloads directly in space.

According to information released at the forum, the constellation will consist of 2,400 inference computing satellites and 400 training computing satellites. They will be deployed in low-Earth orbits at altitudes of 500 to 1,000 kilometers, including sun-synchronous and low-inclination orbits, and interconnected via satellite-to-satellite and satellite-to-ground laser links to enable high-speed data transmission.

The network is designed to deliver inference capacity of about 100,000 peta-operations per second and training capacity at the million-peta-operations level. One peta-operation equals 10 quadrillion operations per second.

Adaspace's first group of space computing centers was launched in May 2025, completing key technology verification. The company said additional groups are scheduled for orbital deployment in 2026. Under its roadmap, Adaspace aims to complete a constellation of around 1,000 satellites and begin commercial operations before 2030, with full deployment planned by 2035.

Founded in 2018, Adaspace Technology is currently pursuing a Hong Kong initial public offering. The company focuses on commercial satellite constellation construction and space-based computing services and has completed 14 space missions, launching 33 satellites and payloads to date.