Tokenization and AI: The emergence of orbital cloud infrastructure | Opinion

The global tokenization market size reached approximately $1.24 trillion in 2025, a significant increase from $865.54 billion in 2024, with projections for multi-trillion-dollar growth by the end of the decade. This growth was primarily driven by regulatory clarity in key jurisdictions. This is Part Two of a four-part series where I evaluate key energy requirements to support the growth in AI-driven tokenization necessitating orbital cloud data centers. Part One: 2025 was the year of tokenization. Part Three focuses on energy requirements to support the growth in AI-driven tokenization, necessitating orbital cloud data centers. Part Four focuses on how tokenized edge cloud streaming and AI are transforming sports and prediction markets betting, which is a rapidly developing immersive experience. 

After writing about sustainability, regulation, and taxation of digital assets since 2017, I did not think I was ever going to get to write this article during my lifetime, especially together with my editor, Max Yakubowski, still by my side. So here we go… 2025 is the year when the concept of “orbital cloud” infrastructure moved from theoretical to initial implementation, with several companies and research institutions launching or planning to launch the first prototypes of orbital data centers and computing nodes in low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that are powered by space solar energy.

President Donald Trump’s Executive Order Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, which advances his America’s AI Action Plan, released earlier this year, was followed by the U.S. Department of Energy launching the Genesis Mission, a historic national effort that will use the power of artificial intelligence to accelerate discovery science, strengthen national security, and drive energy innovation. As a result of these policies, several hyperscale data center companies are exploring the integration of orbital solar energy for energy-intensive blockchain and AI verification processes.

Inaugural launch of orbital cloud network

On December 10, 2025, PowerBank Corporation launched the inaugural  DeStarlink Genesis-1 satellite, marking Orbit AI’s first step toward building its Orbital Cloud network — an architecture where AI compute, connectivity, and blockchain-verified processing occur directly in low-Earth satellites, powered by space solar energy.

Orbit AI is a Singapore-based pioneer in aerospace that is developing a decentralized low-Earth orbit satellite network (DeStarlink) combined with orbital AI compute and data center infrastructure (DeStarAI), which is powered entirely by space solar energy. The system involves solar-powered computing payloads and blockchain-verified nodes in space, which are designed to be resilient to geopolitical controls. The company is collaborating with PowerBank Corporation (Canada), Intellistake Technologies Corp (Canada), NVIDIA (US) for high-performance GPUs, and the Ethereum Foundation (Switzerland) for blockchain architecture.

The emergence of orbital cloud infrastructure during 2025 is grounded in widening public-sector commitments, steadily declining satellite launch prices to one-hundredth of shuttle-era levels, and component breakthroughs that collectively reposition the space solar technology from laboratory concept to a plausible utility-scale option. Continuous solar energy in geostationary orbit removes the intermittency limits that hamper terrestrial renewables. At the same time, metamaterial rectennas have surpassed 90% conversion efficiency thresholds, shrinking the land footprint of ground receivers and trimming delivered-energy costs. 

During 2025, the space-based solar power market size reached $0.63 billion, and it is forecasted to climb steadily to $4.19 billion by 2040, reflecting a robust 13.46% CAGR between 2025 and 2040.

What is a hyperscale cloud data center?

A hyperscale cloud provider is a massive-scale service provider that operates extensive, globally dispersed data centers to deliver on-demand computing resources. These providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, are characterized by their ability to scale horizontally and vertically to support millions of virtual machines and vast workloads by integrating edge cloud technology, to extend their services to smaller, distributed micro-data centers and network points closer to users for lower latency, better performance in remote areas. 

These hyperscale cloud providers store data for AI and use tokenization in two key ways: for AI model processing and for data security/compliance. They are the physical infrastructure that makes data center operations possible.  However, these data centers need massive, constant renewable power (tens to hundreds of MW), with AI driving demand. Therefore, hyperscale cloud providers are exploring the concept of placing solar collection and data centers in orbit to leverage constant solar energy and alleviate terrestrial power grid strain. 

Spade-based solar power

Space-based solar power, or SBSP, is a promising concept for generating continuous, carbon-free energy from orbit to power terrestrial grids and hyperscale data centers. In orbit, solar panels could be up to eight times more productive than on Earth and operate nearly continuously, significantly reducing the need for traditional battery storage. SBSP can beam energy to ground receiving stations (rectennas) to provide stable, clean power for high-demand users like hyperscale cloud data centers.

SBSP combines several cutting-edge space technologies into a single platform with decentralized LEO networks (DeStarlink), orbital AI data centers (DeStarAI), robotics, wireless power transmission (microwaves or lasers), and blockchain-powered verification nodes with projections for $700 billion growth over the next decade. 

SBSP is expensive to develop and has been historically explored by organizations like the U.S. NASA, China Academy of Space Technology Corporation, the Japanese Space Agency, European Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organization, Russian Space Agency, and the World Economic Forum. So far, Caltech (USA), JAXA (Japan with Mitsubishi), China, and the EU (ASCEND) are actively developing space-based solar power for wireless energy transmission, with Caltech’s recent mission demonstrating first-ever in-orbit wireless power beaming using lightweight tech, while JAXA/MHI and others focus on ground/space tests for beaming energy from orbit, aiming for continuous, clean power globally, overcoming weather/night issues.

Additionally, several companies are actively working on commercializing space-based solar power, including major aerospace firms and a growing number of specialized startups.  Established aerospace and defense companies are key players in SBSP research and large systems development, often collaborating with government agencies like Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. A number of other companies, Solaren Corporation (US), Space Solar (UK), Aetherflux (US), EMROD (New Zealand), Reflect Orbital (US), Virtus Solis Technologies (US), Overview Energy, with Dr. Paul Jaffe (US), Lonestar (US), Starcloud (US) are also contributing to the SBSP orbital cloud network commercialization efforts. 

Tax law changes to commercial solar tax credits & cloud transactions

As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, which President Donald Trump signed into law, commercial solar energy tax credits were scaled back, with strict new deadlines and conditions imposed, rather than being fully “cancelled” outright.

To be eligible for the commercial solar tax credit, construction must have begun on or before July 4, 2026, to use the standard timeline, which generally allows up to four years from the start of construction to complete the project and be placed in service (e.g., a project started in 2026 could be placed in service as late as 2030).

Projects beginning construction after July 4, 2026, must be placed in service by December 31, 2027, to qualify for any credit.

The tax credit for commercial projects (under Section 48E) will be eliminated entirely for facilities placed in service after December 31, 2027, if they did not meet the begin-construction deadline. 

Also, for a cloud company’s cross-border transactions, the IRS final regulations, effective January 14, 2025, classify income from cloud transactions as service income, not property leases. This can impact foreign tax credits and cross-border withholding tax planning for these companies.