SpaceX is pushing ahead with an orbital data center project and plans to launch satellites carrying AI chips into space as early as next year. According to Sina Finance, the company said in its IPO filing that the project involves "major technical complexity" and "unproven or nonexistent technologies," and that its commercial viability remains uncertain.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk told investors this month that the effort is not a distant-future idea. Musk said on X on Monday that the first AI satellites carrying Nvidia chips will launch in the fourth quarter of 2027, with "mass deployment" in 2028.

Company filings, technical documents and aerospace engineer analysis show SpaceX must solve three linked problems to operate at scale: launching rockets at unprecedented frequency and low cost, cooling high-energy computers in a vacuum, and replacing satellites regularly to keep up with chip upgrades. Christopher Smith, a senior aerospace engineer at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, said the logistics challenge is "extremely huge." He calculated that maintaining the million-satellite constellation SpaceX calls "Starmind" would require more than nine Starship launches per day, based on 60 satellites per rocket and chip replacement every five years.

SpaceX also faces a thermal-management challenge. Its website shows a satellite design with deployable radiators totaling 160 square meters, while the AI data center would need a stronger cooling system for peak power consumption of about 250 kilowatts. The company plans to use a pumped liquid-cooling loop to move heat from the central computing unit to the radiators.

The company must also make the economics competitive with terrestrial data centers. SpaceX has begun building a natural gas pipeline to its Texas launch facility to speed fuel transport, and it is working with Tesla and Intel on a $17 billion chip manufacturing plant in the state. In its IPO filing, SpaceX said the orbital AI plan depends on obtaining enough AI chips, far more than are currently available.