SpaceX has announced the construction of a giant Gigasat manufacturing complex in Texas, with an area of more than 1 million square meters, which will serve as a base for creating orbital AI data centers. According to Elon Musk, the plant, which is more than 10 times superior to the current Starfactory, will be fully vertically integrated: from the production of silicon plates and solar panels to the assembly of the satellites themselves. By 2027, SpaceX plans to launch AI1 satellites with a length of about 70 meters, each carrying 150 kW of computing power and cooling with two-way radiators.

The company’s ambitions extend far beyond single launches: by the end of 2027, SpaceX aims to achieve 1 GW of orbital AI computations, which will require putting more than 6,000 AI1 devices into orbit per year. Musk plans to scale up this figure by an order of magnitude per year, reaching 100 GW by 2030. To meet the unprecedented need for SpaceX, Tesla and xAI are establishing a joint venture called Terafab in Austin that will produce up to 200 million advanced 2-N chips per year on an area of 100 million square feet.

Despite the scale of the plan, experts are skeptical, given that none of the three companies have ever been involved in semiconductor manufacturing, much less at the cutting edge of the 2-year tech process. However, the launch of satellite production in 2027 looks quite realistic, as solar panels, wiring and shells are based on SpaceX technologies already used for Starlink V3 satellites, simply applied on a much larger scale.