The race to secure electricity for the data center boom has taken an unusual turn. Meta has signed an agreement with startup Overview Energy that could send infrared light from space to solar farms on Earth, helping power data centers at night. The idea is ambitious, but the logic behind it is straightforward: if compute demand keeps rising, so does the need for reliable electricity. Meta’s move suggests that conventional energy planning may no longer be enough for AI-scale infrastructure.
Why the Meta-Overview agreement matters now
Meta’s data centers used more than 18, 000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, roughly enough to power more than 1. 7 million American homes for a year. That figure helps explain why the company is looking beyond familiar grid solutions. Meta has committed to building 30 gigawatts of renewable power sources, with a focus on industrial-scale solar power plants, but solar alone creates a timing problem: generation falls when the sun goes down. For a data center operator, that gap is operational, not theoretical.
Overview Energy’s proposal is designed to close that gap without leaning primarily on battery storage or backup generation. The four-year-old Ashburn, Virginia-based company, which emerged from stealth in December, says it is developing spacecraft that collect solar power in space, convert it to near-infrared light, and beam it to large terrestrial solar farms. Those farms would then convert the light into electricity. In theory, that could let solar infrastructure keep feeding the grid after sunset, directly supporting data center demand.
How the space-based model changes the energy equation
The centerpiece of the arrangement is a first capacity reservation agreement that would give Meta access to up to 1 gigawatt of power from Overview’s spacecraft. The companies have not disclosed whether money changed hands. Still, the structure is notable because it ties a hyperscale technology company to a power-delivery concept that sits well outside standard utility planning.
Overview says it has already demonstrated power transmission to the ground from an aircraft and plans to launch a satellite to low Earth orbit in January 2028 for its first power transmission from space. Marc Berte, the company’s chief executive, expects satellites for the Meta commitment to begin launching in 2030. His long-term target is 1, 000 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, where each satellite would stay fixed above the same point on Earth. The company says each spacecraft could provide power for more than 10 years.
The design choice is also strategic. Overview argues that a wide infrared beam aimed at existing solar farms can avoid some of the technological, safety, and regulatory issues that complicate higher-intensity laser or microwave concepts. The company has even created a contract metric, “megawatt photons, ” to describe the amount of light needed to generate a megawatt of electricity. That framing reflects how unusual the deal is: it is not simply a generation contract, but a wager on transmission from space as a utility layer.
Expert perspective and the scale of the bet
Meta’s electricity use shows why the search for new options is intensifying. The company says it continues to expand its compute footprint, and the power challenge grows with it. The broader point is that data center planning is becoming inseparable from energy innovation. In that sense, this deal is less about a novelty in orbit and more about the economics of keeping AI infrastructure supplied around the clock.
Marc Berte, chief executive of Overview Energy, described the project as a way to operate across multiple energy markets rather than just one, saying there is “a big difference between being in any one energy market, and being in all of the energy markets. ” His comments point to the commercial logic behind the model: if the system works at scale, it could increase the return on investment from solar farms while reducing reliance on fossil fuels. The key phrase remains conditional. The company itself says the concept must be deployed at scale before those benefits can be treated as durable.
What this could mean beyond one deal
If Overview’s system works as planned, its initial deployment would reach from the West Coast of the United States across to Western Europe as Earth rotates beneath the fleet. That geographic reach matters because it turns power delivery into a time-zone problem as much as a weather problem. For data center operators, the promise is not only more electricity, but more flexibility in when and where that electricity arrives.
The broader impact could extend to renewable energy infrastructure itself. The model aims to make large solar farms more valuable by extending their productive hours, which may alter the economics of building them. But the risks are equally clear. Overview still has to move from demonstration to orbital deployment, and the timeline stretches years into the future. The agreement therefore signals direction, not proof.
For now, the most important takeaway is that the energy needs of AI are forcing companies to think beyond Earth-bound generation alone. Meta’s deal with Overview places a futuristic idea into a very current problem: how to keep a data center running when the sun is down. If the plan advances, it could redraw assumptions about what counts as practical power supply—and if it stalls, it will still mark how far the search for electricity has already gone.
