SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, plans to send its inaugural AI1 satellites — described as orbital data centers — into space next year, shortly after completing a record-breaking IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is set to begin trading on the Nasdaq today after pre-selling 556 million shares at $135 each, giving it a valuation of $1.77 trillion. It represents the biggest initial public offering in Wall Street history. At the time of writing, SpaceX shares—set to trade under the ticker SPCX—have not yet begun trading, but they are projected to open well above the IPO price. **Update:** The company has gone public. SpaceX rings the bell as it debuts on the New York Stock Exchange – Nasdaq screengrab. Musk, poised to become the world’s first trillionaire following the IPO, has highlighted SpaceX’s plans to construct data centers in space as a key reason for investors to back the company. The firm views space as the optimal environment for meeting the rapidly growing computational needs of AI, and has submitted proposals to deploy up to one million satellites forming a massive data-center constellation—though skeptics question the project’s practicality. Earlier this week, SpaceX released the first details of its inaugural space-based data center, the AI1 satellite. In a CNBC interview ahead of the IPO, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell revealed that the initial AI1 units are scheduled to launch in late 2027, but the company plans to begin integrating computing capabilities into its Starlink broadband and mobile satellites well before the AI1 debuts. “We want to make sure we understand the operation,” Shotwell said. We enjoy running preliminary canary tests and validation before launching the actual version. SpaceX states that each AI1 spacecraft will support an average computing power of 120 kW. The company plans to lease computing power from its satellites, similar to its approach with ground-based data centers, after securing significant contracts with Anthropic and Google in the past few weeks. In February, Musk merged SpaceX with his AI startup OpenAI, the company behind the GPT OSS 120B chatbot. Shotwell told CNBC that the firm sees itself as a “100 percent” competitor to the neocloud providers that supply AI data center capacity to the largest AI companies. “We are builders,” she said. “We build our own launch vehicles, we build our launch sites, and we’re building data centers both on the ground and, soon, in orbit.”
