On Friday, when SpaceX filed plans with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a data center network of millions of satellites, you might have thought Elon Musk was having a little fun with us. But a week later, it’s clear he’s dead serious.
The most obvious step, of course, is the official merger between SpaceX and xAI that went ahead on Monday, officially bringing together Musk’s space and AI businesses in a way that makes a lot more sense if some sort of joint infrastructure project is planned.
But even beyond the merger, we’re starting to see the idea of orbital AI data clusters—essentially, computer networks operating in space—cohere into a real plan. On Wednesday, the FCC accepted the filing and set a timeline seeking public comment. It’s usually a pro forma step, but FCC Chairman Brendan Carr took the unusual step share the file on X. Throughout his tenure as president, Carr has proven himself willing to help Trump’s friends and punish his enemies — So as long as Musk stays on Trump’s good side, the proposal is likely to ship without a hitch.
At the same time, Elon Musk began to flesh out the argument for orbital data centers to the public. In one new episode of John Collison’s “Cheeky Pint” podcast, which also featured guest Dwarkesh Patel, Musk laid out the basic case for moving most of our AI computing power into space. Essentially, solar panels generate more energy in space so you can cut down on one of the main operating expenses for data centers.
“It’s harder to scale on the ground than in space,” Musk said on the podcast. “Any given solar panel will give you about five times more power in space than on the ground, so it’s actually a lot cheaper to do it in space.”
Close listeners will notice that there is a small gap in logic here! It’s true that solar panels generate more energy in space, but just because power isn’t the only cost of running a data center, and solar panels aren’t the only way to power a data center, it doesn’t mean it’s cheaper to do the whole thing in orbit, as Patel noted on the podcast. Patel also raised concerns about serving GPUs that fail during AI model training, but you’ll have to listen to the full episode for that.
Overall, Musk was undeterred, marking 2028 as a watershed year for orbital data centers. “You can mark my words, in 36 months, but probably closer to 30 months, the most exciting place to put AI is going to be space,” Musk said.
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It didn’t stop there. “Five years from now, my prediction is that we will be launching and operating more artificial intelligence in space each year than the cumulative total on Earth,” Musk continued.
For context, by 2030, global data center capacity will be about 200 GWwhich is about a trillion dollars worth of infrastructure when you just put it in the ground.
Of course, SpaceX makes its money launching things into orbit, so this is all pretty convenient for Musk — especially now that SpaceX has an AI company attached to it. And as the new SpaceX-xAI group heads toward an IPO in a few months, you can expect to hear a lot more about orbital data centers in the coming months. As tech companies continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into data center spending each year, there’s a real chance that not all of the money will stay on the ground.
Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the host of Cheeky Pint. TechCrunch regrets the error.
