Fri, August 28, 2026<\/p>\n
SpaceX’s first orbital data center is now due to launch in the fourth quarter of 2027 \u2014 about a year earlier than the company told investors when it went public.<\/p>\n
The company had earlier noted plans to start deploying satellites “as early as 2028” in\u00a0its initial May Prospectus<\/a>. Then on the company’s first earnings call on Aug. 4, Musk said launches would start next year. And on Aug. 24 he put a quarter on it: “SpaceX, in partnership with Nvidia, has designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with significant scale in 2028,”\u00a0he wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 \u2014\u00a06 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Dave Ramsey warns nearly 50% of Americans are making 1 big Social Security mistake.\u00a0Here’s what it is and 3 simple steps to fix it ASAP<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n The tax breaks in Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ expire after 2028.\u00a0Here are 4 moves to make before the window closes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n SpaceX went public in June and is valued at more than $1.8 trillion, up from\u00a0$7.8 billion in revenue last quarter<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a price that assumes a lot goes right. And Nvidia, which\u00a0reported earnings Aug. 26<\/a>, is the company selling it the parts.<\/p>\n A Vera Rubin NVL72 hardware is a\u00a0server cabinet<\/a>\u00a0a little taller than a refrigerator, and it’s the newest thing Nvidia sells to data centers. SpaceX wants to strip one down, bolt it to solar panels and fly it in an orbit that keeps it in sunlight nearly all the time. From there, whatever it computes comes back to Earth over the same laser links Starlink satellites use to talk to each other. The company says each satellite will draw\u00a0about 250 kilowatts<\/a>\u00a0at peak, and it has already\u00a0asked the FCC<\/a>\u00a0for permission to launch up to a million of them.<\/p>\n Back in June, Musk was saying the satellite’s design could work with\u00a0Nvidia’s older GB300 chips<\/a>, and that SpaceX would draw up a version for Google’s TPUs as well. Two suppliers means a buyer can play one off the other on price. But on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, Musk dropped the second one.<\/p>\n “We’ve decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture,”\u00a0Musk said<\/a>. “We’re exclusive to Nvidia.”<\/p>\n That is a lot to give up on a satellite that hasn’t flown, though it may not last. SpaceX and Tesla are planning a chip plant called\u00a0Terafab<\/a>, and SpaceX says one of the things it will make is chips for the space data centers, which would end the exclusivity once Musk’s own factory is<\/p>\n running.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nvidia is also a shareholder. It\u00a0put money into xAI in January<\/a>, and that stake became SpaceX stock when the two companies\u00a0merged in February<\/a>. Nvidia’s own balance sheet shows its holdings of other companies’ stock jumped from\u00a0$12.9 billion in January to $42.8 billion<\/a>\u00a0by the end of July, though Nvidia hasn’t said how much of that is SpaceX. In other words, Nvidia sells SpaceX the racks and gets paid a second time when SpaceX’s shares go up.<\/p>\n Nvidia’s data center business\u00a0brought in $89 billion<\/a>\u00a0in the quarter it reported Aug. 26, up 117% from a year earlier, and the company expects $108 billion in total revenue this quarter. Rubin racks are already running at CoreWeave, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle. On top of that, Nvidia has lined up Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to raise more than $500 billion over time to finance AI infrastructure, though those deals aren’t final yet.<\/p>\n So if you hold an index fund, you own Nvidia whether you chose it or not; it’s the\u00a0largest single holding<\/a>\u00a0in Vanguard’s S&P 500 fund. Whatever SpaceX launches in 2028 won’t be what moves it.<\/p>\n Read More:\u00a0<\/strong>Vanguard reveals what’s coming for U.S. stocks \u2014 and it could be bad news for this group of investors<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n At a valuation above $1.8 trillion, SpaceX’s price already counts on the orbital business arriving more or less when Musk says it will. JPMorgan, for one, is comfortable with that. Analyst Doug Anmuth\u00a0told clients Aug. 25<\/a> he expects SpaceX to build toward roughly 75 gigawatts of orbital compute between 2029 and the end of 2031, “at a significantly cheaper cost than could be done on Earth.”<\/p>\n Now, whether it’s cheaper depends on what it costs to put a kilogram in orbit, and no one has proven that number yet. Bain estimated in July that the math only works once a launch costs\u00a0$50 to $100 per kilogram<\/a>, against roughly $600 for a Falcon 9 today. Radiation is a problem on top of that. A stray particle can\u00a0flip a bit inside a processor<\/a>, and the finer the circuitry, the easier that gets. Rubin’s circuitry is about as fine as Nvidia makes, and no one has run a rack this size in orbit long enough to know how often it will happen.<\/p>\n SpaceX’s schedule now has a\u00a0test satellite going up early in 2027<\/a>, factory production starting later in the year and the first working launch in the fourth quarter. As for Musk’s track record on dates, he first showed the Tesla Roadster\u00a0in 2017<\/a>\u00a0and it still hasn’t shipped, and the\u00a0Cybertruck<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Semi<\/a>\u00a0both arrived years behind his original dates. So you may want to write each of those in pencil.<\/p>\n His\u00a0Aug. 24 post<\/a>\u00a0said the space version of the rack is “significantly simpler, lower cost, denser and lighter than a traditional rack.” But he didn’t say what one costs.<\/p>\n Moneywise requested comments from the SpaceX team but had not received a response by publication time.<\/p>\n Millionaires under 43 hold only 25% of their wealth in stocks.\u00a0Here’s where their money is actually going<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Here’s the average income of Americans by age in 2026.\u00a0Are you keeping up or falling behind?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Robert Kiyosaki says China is ‘dumping’ the US as America piles on debt.\u00a0Fortify your riches with 4 key assets<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n This fund has historically paid 8% or higher for 25 months, with just a $100 minimum to start \u2014\u00a04 ways to grow your cash without the stock market<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Join 250,000+ readers and get Moneywise’s best stories and exclusive interviews first \u2014 clear insights curated and delivered weekly.\u00a0Subscribe now<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n This article originally appeared on\u00a0Moneywise.com<\/a>\u00a0under the title:\u00a0Elon Musk is about to launch an Nvidia data center into orbit \u2014 and he’s betting everything on its chips<\/a><\/p>\nMust Read<\/h2>\n
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