SpaceX goes all in on AI information facilities in area — and the corporate kicked off its IPO week with a sneak peek.
In an interview with a SpaceX worker uploaded onto X on Monday, Elon Musk revealed essentially the most detailed look but on the AI satellite tv for pc the corporate is planning to launch into area in droves.
Based on the specs shared by SpaceX, the AI information heart might be 20 meters tall and have a wingspan of 70 meters, making it the most important satellite tv for pc the rocket agency has launched to this point.
SpaceX
Musk described it as “a draft model of model one” of SpaceX’s orbital information heart, and the satellite tv for pc consists of a rack of AI chips supported by large photo voltaic panels and liquid radiators.
The billionaire mentioned the design was “a lot less complicated” than the corporate’s Starlink satellite, which SpaceX has been launching into area since 2019, and would rely totally on know-how developed for SpaceX’s satellite tv for pc web service.
“We do not assume it is a tremendous laborious drawback, in comparison with issues we already do,” mentioned Musk.
The large photo voltaic panels might be constructed at a brand new manufacturing facility in Bastrop, Texas, the place SpaceX already makes Starlink elements. Musk mentioned the “Gigasat” manufacturing facility, which spans greater than 11 million sq. ft, is underneath building and might be working at “some cheap quantity” by the tip of subsequent yr.
Musk has lengthy been an advocate of utilizing orbital data centers to coach and run highly effective AI fashions, arguing that AI satellites can make the most of plentiful photo voltaic power and keep away from the public backlash that has embroiled many new information heart tasks.
SpaceX has indicated it plans to launch as many as one million AI data centers, and the large growth of orbital compute is a serious a part of the corporate’s pitch to traders because it gears as much as go public at a $1.75 trillion valuation this week.
SpaceX
In investor filings, SpaceX has justified that valuation by arguing it has a complete addressable market value $28.5 trillion, of which AI accounts for $26.5 trillion.
In a separate interview on Monday, SpaceX CFO Bret Johnson mentioned SpaceX’s AI information facilities would use Nvidia GPUs.
The orbital platforms will even ultimately use specialised radiation-hardened chips constructed by Terafab, the massive semiconductor fab that SpaceX is constructing with Tesla and Intel.
Musk mentioned on Monday that the Terafab facility would probably be round 10 million sq. ft, roughly 10 instances the dimensions of Tesla’s largest manufacturing facility in Austin.
