Overview’s satellites will collect sunlight continuously in geosynchronous orbit and beam it as near-infrared light to existing ground solar installations, which convert it to electricity. The approach extends solar farm output through the night without new land, new grid connections, or new infrastructure on the ground.

Meta has signed an agreement with Overview Energy, a space solar startup, to secure up to 1 gigawatt of power from satellites that collect solar energy in orbit and beam it to Earth as near-infrared light.

An initial orbital demonstration is planned for January 2028; commercial power delivery is expected in 2030. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The deal is the first commercial capacity reservation for space-based solar energy by any company, and it marks the highest-profile endorsement yet of a technology that has long occupied the realm of speculative engineering.

The core problem the deal is addressing is the most pressing operational constraint in AI infrastructure: data centres need electricity around the clock, but most renewable energy sources, wind and solar, are intermittent by nature.

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Meta’s data centres used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024 alone, roughly equivalent to powering 1.7 million American households for a year. As the company expands its AI compute footprint, including the Hyperion data centre campus in Louisiana and the Prometheus campus in Ohio, the latter of which is being powered by nuclear energy, its total power demand will increase substantially.

The company’s target is to bring its renewable energy capacity to 30 gigawatts. The challenge is that even as companies commit to renewable energy, solar farms stop generating at night and wind farms are weather-dependent.

Battery storage at data-centre scale is expensive and land-intensive. Nuclear energy solves the intermittency problem but requires years of regulatory approval and construction. Space solar is a third path.

Overview’s design is meaningfully different from earlier space solar concepts that proposed using lasers or microwaves to beam energy from space to a central receiving station.

Those approaches face significant technical, safety, and regulatory barriers: microwave beams require large purpose-built rectenna installations, and high-intensity laser transmission raises aviation and safety concerns. O

verview instead uses a broad, 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.

That farm’s existing photovoltaic infrastructure converts the near-infrared light into electricity exactly as it would convert sunlight. The beam effectively extends the solar farm’s generation hours into the evening and nighttime, without requiring any new land, new grid connection, or new ground infrastructure.

The satellites will operate in geosynchronous orbit, remaining fixed relative to a given point on the Earth’s surface.

Overview was founded in 2022 and is based in Ashburn, Virginia, within the data-centre-dense corridor of northern Virginia that houses a large portion of the world’s internet infrastructure.

The company emerged from stealth in December 2025. It has already demonstrated power beaming from a moving airborne platform to the ground, a precursor to the space-based transmission it is developing.

The satellite LEO demonstration planned for January 2028 will be the first test of energy 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 Regulatory at NextEra Energy.

The three advisers span both the space and energy regulatory domains that Overview’s technology must navigate simultaneously.

Nat Sahlstrom, Meta’s Vice-President of Energy and Sustainability, framed the deal as a strategic hedge: “Space solar technology represents a transformative step forward by leveraging existing terrestrial infrastructure to deliver new, uninterrupted energy 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 from Overview’s founding, in a sector, space solar power, 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 continuous high-power energy transmission at commercial scale remain unsolved.

The agreement grants Meta early access to capacity from Overview’s system; it does not guarantee that the system will exist as planned, and financial terms are undisclosed.

Overview has introduced a new unit of measurement, “megawatt-photons”, to describe the light power required to generate a megawatt of electricity, a framing that reflects how unlike a standard power purchase agreement this deal is.

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 around-the-clock renewable power for its 2030 data centre estate.

If Overview succeeds, Meta has secured a strategic advantage. If Overview does not, Meta has lost the cost of signing the agreement.