SpaceX targets up to 10 GW of ground-based compute in 2027

SpaceX aims to deploy up to 10 gigawatts (GW) of ground-based computing capacity for superintelligence (SI) in 2027. The company discussed the target on its October 20 earnings call, described by Ars Technica on October 21. The figure is a deployment target, not a statement of capacity already installed.

Ground-based computing runs on computer systems housed in data centres, supported by power and cooling infrastructure. A gigawatt measures electrical power, not processing speed or the amount of electricity generated.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the company was applying its Falcon rocket engineering team to that deployment, in comments detailed in the outlet’s October 29 account. The team helped push Falcon 9 operations above 150 launches a year. Musk proposes bringing that experience in running frequent rocket launches to the construction of computing infrastructure.

Musk predicts faster infrastructure deployment

Musk said the team had achieved almost 90 percent market share measured by mass delivered to orbit. He argued that applying the same engineers to computing infrastructure would allow SpaceX to deploy power, cooling and other infrastructure “vastly faster than anyone else.”

The planned computing rollout is scheduled for 2027. Musk said the team’s deployment rate might eventually exceed that of all competitors combined—a forecast about its future performance.