Musk's Trillion-Dollar Bet: A Million AI Satellites to Put Data Centres in Orbit

SpaceX Files for Million-Satellite Orbital Data Centre Network

SpaceX has submitted a groundbreaking application to the Federal Communications Commission seeking permission to launch up to one million satellites designed to function as orbital data centres. The filing, accepted by the FCC on the fourth of February twenty twenty-six, describes a system operating at altitudes between five hundred and two thousand kilometres, connected by high-bandwidth optical laser links.

In its filing, SpaceX characterised the network as a first step towards becoming a Kardashev two-level civilisation, one capable of harnessing the Sun's full power. The company argues that solar panels are roughly five times more effective in space than on the ground, while the vacuum of space provides natural cooling for computing hardware.

Musk's Bold Predictions

Speaking on a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison, Musk predicted that space would become the cheapest location for AI infrastructure in under three years. He went further, claiming that within five years, SpaceX would be launching and operating more AI computing capacity annually than the entire cumulative total on Earth.

Achieving this vision would require approximately ten thousand launches per year, a staggering increase from SpaceX's record of one hundred and sixty-five orbital launches in twenty twenty-five.

Trillion-Dollar Merger Powers the Vision

The orbital ambitions are closely tied to the recently completed merger between SpaceX and Musk's AI startup xAI. Finalised on the second of February, the deal created the most valuable private company in history at roughly one point two five trillion dollars. The combined entity brings together rocket technology, the Grok chatbot, and the social media platform X under one corporate umbrella.

Musk described the merger as creating the most ambitious vertically-integrated innovation engine on and off Earth, with an initial public offering reportedly planned for mid twenty twenty-six that could raise fifty billion dollars.

Industry Scepticism Persists

Not everyone is convinced. Industry analysts have questioned the feasibility of cooling GPUs in the vacuum of space, maintaining and upgrading hardware in orbit, and the sheer scale of launches required. Joe Morgan, chief operating officer of data centre firm Patmos, was blunt in his assessment, calling the idea of putting servers in orbit stupid unless your customers are also in orbit. AWS chief executive has also dismissed space data centres as being pretty far from reality.