I suspect that this orbital data centers isn't entirely about dollars (No doubt dollars are important).

I suspect it is about the regulatory environment. The regulatory environment on data centers is moving quickly. Data centers used to be considered a small portion of the economy and thus benign and not worth extorting/controlling. This seems to be changing, rapidly.

Given that data centers only exchange information with their consumers they are a natural candidate for using orbit as a way to escape regulators.

Further, people are likely betting that regulators will take considerable time to adjust since space is multinational.