SpaceX reveals its first orbital data center AI1

By Matthew Griffin Space 24th April 2026

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Moving AI compute into orbit untethers data centres from land, water and grid limits — if vacuum cooling can be solved.

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Elon Musk has the first detailed design of SpaceX's AI1 satellite in a 30-minute video posted to the company's X account, the opening generation of an orbital craft SpaceX wants to build by the million to run AI workloads off Earth's power grid. Carrying a 150 kW peak compute payload across a 70-metre deployed wingspan, the spacecraft uses an interchangeable hardware design that lets different chipmakers supply the processors. The timing of this announcement is no accident, coming just three days before SpaceX’s IPO, which is set to price on June 11th and trade on June 12th at a target valuation near $1.75 trillion.

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In his announcement, Musk pegged the satellite’s compute payload at roughly the draw of a single Nvidia GB300 rack, which pulls around 140 kW on the ground. One AI1, in those terms, is about one rack in orbit. In terms of its overall specs, SpaceX disclosed an average compute payload of 120 kW, a peak of 150 kW, and a density of 70 kW per ton, with the craft operating at roughly 600 km.

A satellite with these specs comes with some serious space requirements, and its 70-metre deployed wingspan edges past the 68.4-metre span of a Boeing 747-8. As for the interchangeable compute, that leaves the platform open to whichever vendor ships the most competitive AI silicon, rather than locking it to a single supplier.

This interchangeability is no doubt important to Musk, not least because SpaceX can’t yet guarantee its own supply of chips. The company is currently building Terafab, a chip fab that’s running as a joint venture with Tesla, while its S-1 IPO filing warns it can’t currently secure enough chips.

The solar system just got its own internet

That aside, the elephant in the room is cooling: a rack on Earth sheds heat into moving air and circulating water, neither of which exists in a vacuum, where the only viable route is radiating it away as infrared. AI1 features up to 110 m² of deployable liquid radiators, as well as redundant pumping loops and integrated micro-meteroid shielding. By comparison, the International Space Station’s ETACS rejects roughly 70 kW of heat — around half of what’s needed to cool a 140 kW GB300 rack — across 422 m² of radiator at a cost of up to $500 million, according to SemiAnalysis.

Musk has previously waved off potential thermal critiques, telling SpaceNews back in March that it's "safe to say SpaceX knows how to do heat rejection in space" and pointing to the company's fleet of more than 10,000 Starlink satellites.

SpaceX filed with the FCC in January to launch up to a million satellites and has already signed compute deals, including a $920 million-per-month agreement with Google. The model has prominent sceptics: OpenAI's Sam Altman called orbital data centers "ridiculous" earlier this year.

Why put a data centre in orbit at all?
Space offers near-limitless solar power and no land or water constraints, but heat is the catch — with no air or water to carry it away, AI1 has to radiate all of its waste heat as infrared, which is the design’s hardest unsolved problem.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath." 15-time best selling author of the "Codex of the Future" series, Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working with royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77 governments, NGOs, and multi-national mid and mega cap firms to help them explore, shape, and lead the next 50 years of business and society.

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