Musk reveals timeline for SpaceX's orbital AI data center
What's the story
SpaceX plans to launch its first NVIDIA-powered orbital AI systems in Q4 of next year, CEO Elon Musk announced on X. Musk added that the project, part of SpaceX's broader push into space-based data centers, is expected to hit "significant scale" by 2028. The innovative data center will use Vera Rubin NVL72 AI system, which packs 72 Rubin GPUs, 36 Vera CPUs, ConnectX-9 SuperNICs, and BlueField-4 DPUs into a single package.
CPU innovation
Vera is NVIDIA's first CPU built for AI agents
NVIDIA's Vera is the company's first-ever CPU designed specifically for AI agents.
It aims to speed up CPU-bound tasks related to model inference, such as tool use, code execution, data processing, orchestration, and simulation.
The advanced processor comes with 88 NVIDIA-designed Olympus cores, Spatial Multithreading technology and high-bandwidth LPDDR5X memory with up to 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth.
Enhanced efficiency
Vera will boost SpaceX's Starmind satellite performance
NVIDIA claims that the Vera CPU can complete tasks up to 1.8 times faster than x86 CPUs across various workloads such as agentic AI, reinforcement learning, and data processing.
This will be a major boost for SpaceX's planned first-generation Starmind AI satellite, which will be based on this optimized system.
The same accelerated computing architecture powering next-generation AI factories on Earth will now be extended into space.
Strategic advantage
Here's how Vera CPU will speed up SpaceX's application workloads
As agentic AI applications increasingly depend on CPUs for tool orchestration, code execution, data processing, and simulation between model calls, SpaceX will use the Vera CPU to speed up these application workloads.
This will enable AI agents to act faster while keeping GPUs fed and fully utilized.
Mike Nicolls, President of SpaceXAI, said "Vera gives us the CPU performance and memory bandwidth to run enormous amounts of orchestration, code and data processing while keeping GPUs doing what they do best."