Elon Musk is about to launch an Nvidia data center into orbit — and he's betting everything on its chips

SpaceX has accelerated its timeline for deploying orbital data centers, announcing plans to launch a space-optimized Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 system in the fourth quarter of 2027, followed by significant scaling in 2028. Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX has chosen to build its space-based compute infrastructure exclusively using Nvidia's architecture, bypassing alternative options such as Google TPUs. Each planned orbital satellite is expected to draw approximately 250 kilowatts of peak power, leveraging solar arrays and Starlink inter-satellite laser links for terrestrial data transmission. The collaboration strengthens Nvidia's dominance across enterprise and edge AI workloads. Nvidia recently generated $89 billion in quarterly data center revenue, up 117% year-over-year, alongside projecting $108 billion in total revenue. Nvidia also holds an equity stake in SpaceX stemming from its earlier investment in xAI. Analysts, including JPMorgan, note that while achieving 75 gigawatts of orbital compute by 2031 could reduce compute costs compared to Earth-bound facilities, significant hurdles remain regarding radiation bit-flips and launch cost economics.