SpaceX has sold investors on a trillion-dollar vision of millions of solar-powered satellites in orbit, packed with chips to power AI. The company, which made its blockbuster stock market debut in June, expects to begin launching orbital data centers into space as soon as next year. Its 407ft-tall rocket, Starship, is central to this plan.

Elon Musk told investors the first AI satellites, packed with Nvidia chips, would launch in the fourth quarter of 2027, with significant scale in 2028. However, technical and logistical hurdles remain significant. To maintain a constellation of 1 million satellites, dubbed Starmind, the company would need to launch more than nine Starship rockets a day.

Aerospace engineers note the challenge of cooling power-hungry computers in a vacuum, where conduction and convection do not function. SpaceX plans to use deployable radiators and a liquid-cooling loop similar to the International Space Station. Additionally, the speculative nature of the bet is evident in IPO filings warning of unproven technologies.

While Starship has completed eight successful launches, the Falcon 9 launched 165 times last year, highlighting the cadence required. Musk must drive down turnaround time for reusable boosters to build out the network. The promise of dominating a critical layer of the AI economy depends on solving these interlocking problems of launch cadence, thermal management, and chip replacement.