Meta is betting that the future of artificial intelligence will be powered from orbit, signing a landmark agreement with space-based solar startup Overview Energy to beam power to its data centers after dark.

The deal reserves up to 1 gigawatt of capacity from Overview’s planned constellation of power-beaming satellites. Instead of relying on batteries or fossil-fuel backup when the sun sets, Meta aims to keep its vast server farms running on solar energy delivered from space.

Meta’s electricity demand is already enormous. Its data centers consumed more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of power in a single year, comparable to the annual usage of well over a million American homes. With AI workloads surging, the company has pledged to help build 30 gigawatts of new renewable capacity, heavily weighted toward utility-scale solar farms.

Overview Energy, based in Ashburn, Virginia, proposes a radical twist on that model. The company is developing spacecraft that harvest continuous sunlight in space, convert it into near-infrared light, and beam it down to very large solar farms on Earth. Those farms would use specially tuned photovoltaic panels to convert the incoming infrared light into electricity, effectively extending their operating hours into the night.

By using a broad, low-intensity infrared beam, Overview aims to avoid the safety and regulatory concerns that have dogged higher-power laser or microwave transmission concepts. Chief executive Marc Berte has said the beam will be safe enough to look directly into, framing it as an overlay on existing solar infrastructure rather than a new kind of power plant on the ground.

The company has already demonstrated power transmission from an aircraft to receivers on the ground and plans its first in-orbit power-beaming test with a low Earth orbit satellite in 2028. To meet Meta’s reservation, Overview intends to begin launching operational spacecraft around 2030, ultimately deploying about 1,000 satellites in geosynchronous orbit, where each can hover over the same region of Earth.

From that vantage point, the fleet could cover roughly a third of the planet, initially spanning from the western United States to Western Europe. As night falls across different markets, Overview’s satellites would illuminate partner solar farms, boosting their output precisely when grid demand and power prices often spike.

Overview has even coined a new unit for the Meta contract, “megawatt photons,” describing the amount of light needed to generate a megawatt of electricity on the ground. If the system scales as promised, it could turn solar farms into round-the-clock assets and give Meta a powerful new lever in the race to secure clean energy for AI.