Elon Musk's SpaceX Merged With xAI. Here Is How They Plan to Dominate With Orbital Data Centers.
Elon Musk's vision of AI data centers in space sounds futuristic, but should investors take it seriously?
Overview
Early this year, Elon Musk pulled off the biggest corporate merger ever, folding his artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, xAI, into Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX) in a deal that valued the combined company at roughly $1.25 trillion. Musk was blunt about the reason: He wants to build data centers in space. It sounds like science fiction, but the plan is surprisingly specific.
The SpaceX project has a name, Starmind, and it involves a satellite called AI1 that functions as an orbiting server rack, delivering around 150 kilowatts of peak computing power. The satellite spans about 70 meters tip to tip (wider than a Boeing 747), and it is equipped with chips that run xAI's Grok models.
Details
SpaceX's roadmap for this project calls for two prototype AI1 satellites to launch in early 2027, with production ramping toward roughly 1 gigawatt of orbital compute per year by late 2027, and commercial operation potentially beginning in 2028. SpaceX has asked regulators for permission to eventually field a constellation of up to 1 million such satellites, ferried up by its reusable Starship rocket, with a single mission deploying 30 to 50 satellites at a time.
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.