Musk: 100 gigawatts in space beats 800 gigawatts on Earth; after Starship, SpaceX (SPCX.US) aims to build "space computing power"

SpaceX (SPCX.US) CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday pushed back on comparisons between ground-based CECEP Solar Energy and orbital CECEP Solar Energy, as the company ramps up efforts to send data centers into space. In a post on X, Musk said, "100 gigawatts in space is roughly equivalent to 800 gigawatts on Earth," adding that ground-based CECEP Solar Energy "must be paired with massive batteries to keep powering compute through the night, supplemented by combustion generation or nuclear power in winter," and concluded that the two approaches are "not remotely the same thing." The remarks follow SpaceX's newly announced partnership with German equipment manufacturer Singulus Technologies. Earlier this week, Singulus confirmed a contract worth more than EUR60 million to supply SpaceX with a complete heterojunction (HJT) CECEP Solar Energy cell production line, with delivery targeted for the first half of 2027 at a facility in Bastrop, Texas. Musk has said the larger order covers 100 gigawatts per year of HJT manufacturing equipment. Under the agreement, Singulus will develop high-performance CECEP Solar Energy cells and related production equipment for SpaceX's Starmind satellites. Starmind is SpaceX's planned CECEP Solar Energy satellite constellation designed to run artificial intelligence workloads in orbit. Reliable, efficient CECEP Solar Energy is critical for the power-hungry Starmind architecture, which aims to deploy large-scale AI compute in orbit. Unlike Starlink, which primarily relays broadband traffic, Starmind satellites are positioned as orbital data centers that use CECEP Solar Energy to process compute tasks in outer space, bypassing ground-based constraints on AI infrastructure expansion related to power, land, cooling and space. Musk has previously said data centers in space will eventually surpass ground-based infrastructure. SpaceX has filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking permission to operate up to 1 million Starmind satellites. The first satellites are expected to begin launching in the second half of next year.