What happened
Elon Musk plans to deploy data centre infrastructure into Earth's orbit to support the £1.25tn SpaceX and xAI merger. The strategy integrates Starlink satellite hardware with xAI compute requirements. Musk aims to bypass terrestrial power and cooling constraints by utilising orbital solar energy and vacuum cooling. This follows the 6 February finalisation of the SpaceX and xAI merger and Tesla’s £2bn investment in xAI on 29 January. The plan targets massive scale compute without land-based utility limits.
Why it matters
Infrastructure architects and procurement teams face a shift from terrestrial grid dependency to orbital hardware lifecycles. Because space-based compute bypasses land-based power shortages and cooling costs, xAI can scale models without competing for local utility capacity. Resulting orbital data sovereignty creates new compliance hurdles for security architects. This move accelerates the £1.4T compute investment pattern seen in OpenAI’s infrastructure plans and Nvidia’s £2B CoreWeave investment, locking competitors into terrestrial resource constraints.
