Elon pledges to give Nvidia a virtual monopoly over the stars

In space, no one can hear you scream when the LLMs hallucinate

Nvidia, currently possessing roughly 85 percent of the datacenter GPU market, could potentially establish a virtual monopoly over space-based computing if Elon Musk's plans come to fruition. Musk, through his social media platform X, announced that SpaceX intends to utilize Nvidia's GPUs exclusively for its orbital datacenters. This collaboration is not surprising, considering Nvidia's financial strength, boasting $13.2 billion in cash reserves, which enables Musk to pursue seemingly ambitious projects.

Specifically, SpaceX is set to deploy Nvidia's Space-1, a tailored version of its upcoming Vera Rubin compute platform, intended for operation in space, where no one can hear the hallucinations of the Large Language Model (LLM). SpaceX's Starmind AI1 satellite compute payload, slated for deployment atop a 30-meter tall, 75-meter wide satellite, will incorporate Nvidia's Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs for datacenter-level space computing.

Despite the impressive power of these systems, the cost of launching the satellites into orbit remains a significant challenge. Currently, it costs approximately $7,000 to place a kilogram into orbit via SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, with the AI1's launch estimated to cost over $23 million. For orbital datacenters to become economically viable, SpaceX aims to reduce the cost per kilogram to $10, a target Musk has previously mentioned.

Assuming this goal is achieved, the launch cost would decrease to around $33,300. Musk's previous commitments, such as SpaceX's Mars mission by 2022 and Tesla's million robo-taxis by 2020, have not been fulfilled. Nevertheless, Musk may still derive value from Starmind AI1's development, as the satellite's architecture could potentially be repurposed for use in terrestrial datacenters, bypassing the need for solar and thermal management systems.

SpaceX's recent financial report, revealing a significant increase in capital expenditures to $18.4 billion, alongside a substantial net loss of $541 million, suggests a potential slowdown in growth. Consequently, the company's stock has experienced a decline of over 10% in mid-day trading.

Written by urgent.news from The Register Science's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.