Marc Benioff
@Benioff · Nov 19, 2025
The lowest cost place for data centers is space when 300 GW of computer data center you can power and cool in space when you have continuous solar and no batteries needed. @elonmusk
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Starship should be able to deliver around 300 GW per year of solar-powered AI satellites to orbit, maybe 500 GW. The “per year” part is what makes this such a big deal.
Average US electricity consumption is around 500 GW, so at 300 GW/year, AI in space would exceed the entire US economy just in intelligence processing every 2 years.
Solar cell production for terrestrial applications is already far above this number at >1500 GW of annual production capacity.
Tonnage to orbit will be solved by Starship.
Chip production is therefore the major piece of the puzzle to be solved.
The Tesla Terafab is needed for this, as there is otherwise no solution at sufficient scale.
These numbers are immense by earthly standards, but don’t register materially on the Kardashev II scale. For that, lunar production of solar-powered AI satellites is needed to take things to the 100+ TW/year level.
06:43 PM · November 19, 2025 · 1.3M views
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