{"id":470261,"date":"2026-06-10T13:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T13:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/470261\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T13:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T13:29:13","slug":"report-says-spacex-plans-to-launch-space-data-center-test-by-late-2027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/470261\/","title":{"rendered":"Report Says SpaceX Plans to Launch Space Data Center Test by Late 2027"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reuters reported Tuesday<\/a> that \u201ctwo people who attended investor presentations\u201d ahead of the SpaceX IPO have leaked exciting news about SpaceX\u2019s plan for AI data centers in space: There will supposedly be a tech demo launched by the end of next year.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s super soon when you consider the company has also said in its S-1 filing (also according to Reuters<\/a>), that the related initiatives \u201cinvolve significant technical complexity and unproven technologies, and may not achieve commercial viability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gizmodo is not a source of investment advice, but it seems like if you\u2019re looking for a clear picture of a company\u2019s proximity to a technological breakthrough, if that company is on the verge of an IPO, it might just be offering less than reliable predictions.<\/p>\n

For instance, if you look at the Lyft prospectus<\/a>, released just before that rideshare company\u2019s 2019 IPO, you can read an awful lot about autonomous vehicles. The company said it was building a \u201cworld-class autonomous vehicle system at [its] Level 5 Engineering Center, with the goal of ensuring access to affordable and reliable autonomous technology.\u201d The prospectus later says:<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin 10 years, our goal is to have deployed a low-cost, scaled autonomous vehicle network that is capable of delivering a majority of the rides on the Lyft platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost exactly two years after the IPO, the aforementioned engineering division, Level 5, was sold to Toyota for $550 million.<\/a> For all anyone knows, Lyft may still roll out a network of AV\u2019s\u2014it hasn\u2019t given up altogether<\/a>\u2014but it\u2019ll be tricky to do it by 2029 without the engineering division purpose-built for that job.<\/p>\n

So tech companies in the midst of IPOs can be a bit blustery. Nonetheless, this is far from the most outlandish of Elon Musk\u2019s hi-tech fever dreams (ahem<\/a>). According to SpaceX\u2019s own artists\u2019 rendering<\/a>, space data centers will be satellites\u2014big satellites, but otherwise not too different from what you probably picture when you close your eyes and imagine a satellite: a 20-foot by 70-foot structure<\/a>, mostly made up of two solar panel \u201cwings,\u201d with another panel in the middle housing the silicon needed to train and run AI models. As one of my Gizmodo colleagues noted last year<\/a>, \u201cthe company does appear uniquely well-positioned to lay the groundwork for orbital server farms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any given expert analysis<\/a> of the SpaceX plan to put AI data centers in space generally coalesces around the same points: it\u2019s not impossible based on existing technology<\/a>, but it\u2019s intricate and fraught with potential drawbacks. Moreover, success would not clearly be a slam dunk when it comes to competing with earthbound hyperscalers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reuters reported Tuesday that \u201ctwo people who attended investor presentations\u201d ahead of the SpaceX IPO have leaked exciting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[8558,516,111,139,69,16610,147,392,1503],"class_list":["post-470261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-data-centers","tag-elon-musk","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-satellites","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}