Overview’s satellites will collect sunlight continuously in a geosynchronous orbit and transmit it as near-infrared light to existing ground-based solar installations, which will convert it into electricity. The approach extends the production of solar farms into the night without the need for new land, new grid connections or new infrastructure on the ground.
Goal has signed an agreement with Energy Summarya space solar startup, to secure up to 1 gigawatt of energy from satellites that collect solar energy in orbit and transmit it to Earth in the form of near-infrared light.
An initial orbital demonstration is planned for January 2028; Commercial power delivery is expected in 2030. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The deal is the first booking of commercial space solar capacity by any company, and marks the highest-profile backing yet of a technology that has long occupied the realm of speculative engineering.
The core issue the deal addresses is the most pressing operational limitation in AI infrastructure: data centers need electricity 24 hours a day, but most renewable energy sources, wind and solar, are intermittent by nature.
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Meta data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024 alone, roughly equivalent to powering 1.7 million American homes for a year. As the company expands its AI computing footprint, including the Hyperion data center campus in Louisiana and the Prometheus campus in Ohio, the latter of which is nuclear-powered, its total energy demand will increase substantially.
The company’s goal is to increase its renewable energy capacity to 30 gigawatts. The challenge is that even when companies commit to renewable energy, solar farms stop generating at night and wind farms are dependent on the weather.
Data center-scale battery storage is expensive and requires a lot of land. Nuclear power solves the intermittency problem but requires years of regulatory approval and construction. Space solar energy is a third path.
Overview’s design is significantly different from previous space solar concepts that proposed using lasers or microwaves to transmit power from space to a central receiving station.
Those approaches face significant technical, safety, and regulatory barriers: Microwave beams require large, purpose-built recena facilities, and high-intensity laser transmission raises aviation and safety concerns. oh
Instead, verview uses a wide, low-intensity near-infrared beam, invisible to the naked eye and, according to CEO Marc Berte, safe to look at directly from the satellite, aimed not at a new receiving station but at an existing utility-scale solar farm.
The existing photovoltaic infrastructure on that farm converts near-infrared light into electricity exactly as it would convert sunlight. The beam effectively extends the solar farm’s generation hours into the afternoon and evening, without requiring new land, new grid connections or new ground infrastructure.
The satellites will operate in geosynchronous orbit and remain fixed with respect to a given point on the Earth’s surface.
Overview was founded in 2022 and is headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia, within the Northern Virginia data center corridor that hosts much of the world’s Internet infrastructure.
The company emerged from stealth in December 2025. It has already demonstrated power transmission from a moving aerial platform to the ground, a precursor to the space transmission it is developing.
The LEO satellite demonstration scheduled for January 2028 will be the first test of power transmission from orbit. The advisory board includes Jim Bridenstine, former NASA administrator and former congressman; Mike Griffin, former NASA administrator; and Joseph Kelliher, former FERC Chairman and Executive Vice President of Regulation at NextEra Energy.
The three advisors span the space and energy regulatory domains that Overview’s technology must navigate simultaneously.
Nat Sahlstrom, vice president of Energy and Sustainability at Meta, framed the agreement as a strategic hedge: “Space solar technology represents a transformative step forward by leveraging existing ground infrastructure to deliver new, uninterrupted power from orbit. We are excited to help bring this new energy technology to market.”
The caveats are substantial. The 2030 commercial delivery date is eight years since Overview was founded, in a sector, space solar, that has produced ambitious concepts but no commercial systems anywhere in the world.
The technical challenges of building, launching and maintaining a geosynchronous satellite capable of transmitting high-power energy continuously on a commercial scale remain unresolved.
The agreement gives Meta early access to Overview’s system capacity; does not guarantee that the system will exist as planned and financial terms are not disclosed.
Overview has introduced a new unit of measurement, “megawatt-photons,” to describe the light power needed to generate one megawatt of electricity, a framework that reflects how different this agreement is from a standard power purchase agreement.
For Meta, the cost of signing a capacity reservation agreement with a pre-commercial startup is low relative to the potential benefit of securing 1 gigawatt of 24-hour renewable energy for its 2030 data center.
If Overview is successful, Meta will have secured a strategic advantage. If Overview does not do so, Meta will have lost the cost of signing the agreement.
