SpaceX and Nvidia are building a data center in orbit

The cloud is going orbital. SpaceX and Nvidia announced on August 4, 2026, that they are jointly developing the compute payload for the Starmind AI1 satellite, a spacecraft designed to run serious artificial intelligence workloads from low Earth orbit using Nvidia’s most advanced silicon. This is not a research curiosity. The two companies are targeting a megaconstellation of up to 1 million satellites, each one functioning as a node in what would effectively become the world’s first distributed AI supercomputer in space. What the AI1 satellite actually does Each satellite is engineered to sustain roughly 120 kW of average compute power, with peaks reaching 150 kW. Each unit stands 20 meters tall and deploys a solar wingspan of 70 meters, roughly two-thirds the length of a Boeing 747, to harvest enough sunlight to feed its power appetite. The hardware at the center of the payload is Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 system, combining Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs. Data processed on board travels back to Earth through Starlink’s existing laser link network, giving the system a high-bandwidth return path without needing a separate ground infrastructure buildout. Why doing AI in space actually mak...