SpaceX and Nvidia Team Up on Orbital AI Data Centers

HAWTHORNE, Calif. — SpaceX is taking its artificial-intelligence ambitions to orbit, announcing a partnership with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in space.

SpaceX revealed the collaboration on X hours before its first-ever earnings call as a public company, saying each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia's Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs. On the call, CEO Elon Musk went further, committing SpaceX to build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. "We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it's the best AI computer," Musk told investors. "So we're exclusive to Nvidia."

Compute Above the Clouds

The idea behind Starmind is audacious: instead of shuttling data down to ground-based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam the results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.

Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space, targeting 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year and roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027. That build-out dovetails with the AI compute business that is already reshaping SpaceX's balance sheet, where leased capacity to major AI labs has become a fast-growing revenue stream alongside the Starlink network that keeps expanding its satellite fleet.

A Timely Reveal

The announcement, first detailed by Teslarati, marked a notable shift in tone. Just two weeks earlier, Musk had knocked down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion in Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news. The dollar figure may have been off, but the direction was right: SpaceX's AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and the company's first quarterly earnings showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp.

Wall Street noticed. Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% on the day of the announcement, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the session before giving back some gains after hours as investors digested the company's heavy capital-spending plans.

Building the Infrastructure of the AI Era

Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. Pairing SpaceX's launch dominance with Nvidia's most advanced silicon gives the venture a credible path from concept to constellation — SpaceX supplies the ride to orbit and the power, Nvidia supplies the brains.

SpaceX expects to begin launching operational Starmind spacecraft in 2027, with Starship providing the heavy lift needed to deploy them at scale. If the plan holds, the company that already launches most of the world's payloads could soon be running a meaningful share of the world's AI compute from orbit — an audacious bet that space, not just the data center, is the next frontier for artificial intelligence.