Subjects / Data Centers
54 answers
“SpaceX has a chance of going about half the GW next year of actually usable compute. “Actually usable” is an important metric. It takes us ~2 months working 24/7 to get a large compute cluster working reliably. I’d guess closer to 6 months for others.”
— Elon Musk, 11 November 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“100GW in space is roughly equal to 800GW on Earth. Moreover, solar on Earth must be paired with massive batteries to continue powering compute at night and supplemented with combustion or nuclear power during winter. These are not the same at all.”
— Elon Musk, 11 November 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“It works both ways, of course. If compute becomes plentiful and cheap, SpaceX revenue will drop. No crying in the casino for either party.”
— Elon Musk, 9 November 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“When we unveil the details of the Starmind computer next year, it will blow people’s minds”
— Elon Musk, 6 November 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“Our capex efficiency is greatly underestimated”
— Elon Musk, 1 November 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“Terrestrial compute will be peanuts compared to orbital compute. Orbital compute deployed per month probably exceeds terrestrial around the end of 2028 and then far exceeds it in 2029.”
— Elon Musk, 31 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“There will be a total of around 1.2M Blackwells at Colossus 2 by end of year”
— Elon Musk, 31 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“Silly analysis. Robot RAM needs will exceed everything else on Earth, as you need the robots to be on physical substates in order to shape atoms. Super intelligence needs will vastly exceed that, but ~100% of SI will be deep space compute. Obviously.”
— Elon Musk, 26 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“I think we’re going to see a lot of stranded compute in partially complete data centers”
— Elon Musk, 25 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“Pretty much. As of the past few weeks, debt markets have almost entirely shut off access to money for any company that doesn’t have substantial revenue independent of AI data centers. SpaceX closed $40B of debt for GPUs, but we’re investment grade and have Starlink & launch revenue. That means the 200+ neoclouds are going to see guppy-level death and consolidation. Some will make it through, but not many.”
— Elon Musk, 25 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“Accounting depreciation is irrelevant (true depreciation s not). Delivering on projected cash flow is what matters.”
— Elon Musk, 25 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“We have a shot at exceeding 10GW next year”
— Elon Musk, 22 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“…the physicist said 0% and the computer scientist said 100% simultaneously. So, I guess maybe I should go 50% then.”
— Elon Musk, 20 October 2026 · Watch: Elon Musk: "Humans Won't Be in Control" When AI Becomes Smarter Than Us · 4:56 ↗ · In the archive
“Old friends are the best friends. Jensen rocks. The Star Mind computer being co-engineered by SpaceX and Nvidia is far better than almost anyone expects and will reach volume production next year. Working with the incredibly talented Nvidia engineering team is pure joy!”
— Elon Musk, 15 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“It’s not that supercomputer data centers are not in high demand, as they definitely are. However, getting money to build complex hardware systems with massive power, cooling & networking is not the same as doing it. SpaceX has a super cracked team that is outperforming the rest of the world by an order of magnitude in mass to orbit and even we find it very difficult!”
— Elon Musk, 13 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“…you're able to harness a lot more of the sun's power in space than you can on Earth…”
— Elon Musk, 10 October 2026 · Watch: Elon Musk: What Comes Next for Humanity (Tesla Owners Silicon Valley) · 28:36 ↗ · In the archive
“Each @SpaceX Star Mind super intelligence spacecraft will have over 250kW of solar power, which is about 20% more than the International Space Station”
— Elon Musk, 1 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“Connectivity per sat will be more like 10Tb in both directions and there is a path to 100+Tb. Each sat is 250kW and will have a SpaceX-designed Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 computer.”
— Elon Musk, 20 September 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“To bring large AI data centers online requires building massive power plants, transformers, liquid cooling loops & chillers, as well as incredibly complex networking (especially for training clusters)”
— Elon Musk, 1 September 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“Consensus estimate is that ~15GW of AI compute produced in 2027 cannot be turned on in 2027. This is harder than just finding power, as you also need to build out all the transformers, wiring, liquid-cooling, (massive) chillers & complex networking.”
— Elon Musk, 29 August 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“The same Starmind V1 satellite design (minus solar & radiator) will be deployed on the ground in our data centers. It’s a major improvement in data center efficiency.”
— Elon Musk, 4 August 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“…we will be constrained in our ability to scale Optimus production because we simply won't have enough AI chips…”
— Elon Musk, 22 July 2026 · Watch: Tesla Q2 2026 earnings call · 16:18 ↗ · In the archive
“As the recently expanded partnership with @AnthropicAI demonstrates, @SpaceX is offering AI compute as a service at significant scale. We are in discussions with other companies to do the same. Over time, especially with orbital data centers, we expect to serve AI at extremely high scale.”
— Elon Musk, 20 May 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“It's just literally we don't see a path to having enough, sufficient quantity of AI chips down the road as we scale production to high levels.”
— Elon Musk, 22 April 2026 · Watch: Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call · 54:48 ↗ · In the archive
“I think it may be only two or three years before it is actually lower cost to send AI chips to space than it is on the ground…”
— Elon Musk, 21 March 2026 · Watch: Terafab Launch (2026) · 14:36 ↗ · In the archive
“So I'm confident actually that SpaceX will get to 10 million tons to orbit per year.”
— Elon Musk, 21 March 2026 · Watch: Terafab Launch (2026) · 8:43 ↗ · In the archive
“Congrats to the @Neuralink team for helping many people who have lost use of their body with our Telepathy implant that enables computer use simply by thinking! The next generation Neuralink cybernetic augment with 3X capability will be ready later this year. Pending regulatory approval, we are also ready to do our first Blindsight augment that will enable those who have even complete loss of vision to see in low resolution at first, leading to high resolution over time.”
— Elon Musk, 28 January 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“…the lowest cost way to do AI compute will be with solar powered AI satellites…”
— Elon Musk, 19 November 2025 · Watch: US-Saudi Investment Forum · 20:53 ↗ · In the archive
“If the power plants could operate at peak power for all 24 hours, as opposed to being at half power, sometimes a quarter power at night, then you could double the energy output of existing power plants.”
— Elon Musk, 22 April 2025 · Watch: Tesla Q1 2025 earnings call (2025) · 21:48 ↗ · In the archive
“As I said a few years ago, the AI scaling constraint will move from chips to voltage transformers to electricity generation. That is worrying for US leadership in AI long-term.”
— Elon Musk, 2 April 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“…the training needs for Optimus, for Optimus humanoid robot are probably at least ultimately 10x what's needed for the car…”
— Elon Musk, 29 January 2025 · Watch: Tesla Q4 and full year 2024 earnings call (2025) · 14:16 ↗ · In the archive
“There were server issues at our Atlanta data center”
— Elon Musk, 17 January 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“…it becomes obvious that the by far the biggest source of energy is the sun.”
— Elon Musk, 23 October 2024 · Watch: Tesla Q3 2024 earnings call (2024) · 28:06 ↗ · In the archive
“Grok 3 is training with 10X, soon 20X the compute of Grok 2”
— Elon Musk, 21 September 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“…we're aiming to have that in production at the end of next year and scale production in 26.”
— Elon Musk, 23 July 2024 · Watch: Tesla Q2 2024 earnings call (2024) · 36:22 ↗ · In the archive
“It's roughly 1 gigawatt hour per square kilometer per day, which is still a lot.”
— Elon Musk, 20 May 2024 · Watch: 10th World Water Forum Keynote · 5:56 ↗ · In the archive
“…they will often think, well, the water crisis is unsolvable, but in fact it is very solvable.”
— Elon Musk, 20 May 2024 · Watch: 10th World Water Forum Keynote · 2:31 ↗ · In the archive
“So kind of like aws, but distributed inference, like it takes a lot of computers to train an AI model, but many orders of magnitude less compute to run it.”
— Elon Musk, 23 April 2024 · Watch: Tesla Q1 2024 earnings call (2024) · 24:15 ↗ · In the archive
“…more than 99% of all compute will be digital instead of biological. Right. And if we're not there already, we will be within a year or two.”
— Elon Musk, 21 December 2023 · Watch: X Spaces with Cathie Wood (ARK Invest) (2023) · 1:06:49 ↗ · In the archive
“But the civilization can last for tens of thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years.”
— Elon Musk, 21 December 2023 · Watch: X Spaces with Cathie Wood (ARK Invest) (2023) · 1:33:45 ↗ · In the archive
“This is not much consolation, but Neuralink is working on a vision chip, which will be ready in a few years. That is the next area after enabling phone/computer telepathy for those who have lost their mind-body connection. We waiting for regulatory approval for our first human.”
— Elon Musk, 7 November 2023 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“…the car is looking at all directions at once and we don't have eyes in the back of my head.”
— Elon Musk, 18 October 2023 · Watch: Tesla Q3 2023 earnings call (2023) · 54:28 ↗ · In the archive
“Tesla has been focused on this for many years, given the extreme energy constraints of an electric car vs a data center”
— Elon Musk, 17 July 2023 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive
“My prediction is that we will go from an extreme silicon shortage today to probably voltage transformer shortage in about a year and then an electricity shortage a year in two years.”
— Elon Musk, 14 July 2023 · Watch: xAI launch X Spaces (2023) · 29:52 ↗ · In the archive
“…if you start going like two, three years out, it's all about total how many gigawatt hours of battery are produced, that will be the limiting factor.”
— Elon Musk, 22 March 2022 · Watch: Giga Berlin Opening · 7:11 ↗ · In the archive
“…there's potential for an integrated home system that kind of does power generation, storage, heating, cooling, air filtration, you know, water purification in a really tight package.”
— Elon Musk, 21 October 2020 · Watch: Tesla Q3 2020 earnings call (2020) · 47:26 ↗ · In the archive
“The people I see being the most wrong about AI are the ones who are very smart because they can't imagine that a computer could be way smarter than them.”
— Elon Musk, 22 July 2020 · Watch: Tesla Q2 2020 earnings call (2020) · 21:43 ↗ · In the archive
“…if you just took a small section of Spain you could power all of Europe…”
— Elon Musk, 2 December 2015 · Watch: Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne · 31:39 ↗ · In the archive
“So that means we need to have a carbon tax and to make it sort of something which is neither a left nor right issue, we should make it probably a revenue neutral carbon tax.”
— Elon Musk, 2 December 2015 · Watch: COP21 talk at the Sorbonne · 10:05 ↗ · In the archive
“And most of that area is going to be in rooftops, so you won't need to disturb land.”
— Elon Musk, 30 April 2015 · Watch: Tesla Powerwall Launch · 3:33 ↗ · In the archive
“…the biggest impact that Tesla will have is not the cars that we make ourselves, but the fact that we show that you can make compelling electric cars that people really want to buy…”
— Elon Musk, 10 June 2014 · Watch: Bloomberg Risk Takers · 36:32 ↗ · In the archive
“When my brother and I were starting our first company, instead of getting an apartment, we just rented a small office and we slept on the couch… We showered at the YMCA and we were so hard-up that we only had one computer… The website was up during the day and I was coding it at night, seven days a week, all the time.”
— Elon Musk, May 2014 · Watch: USC video (~1:52) ↗ · In the archive
“…we should lean in the direction of supporting technologies that are sustainable and lean slightly against technologies that are unsustainable…”
— Elon Musk, 29 September 2011 · Watch: National Press Club Luncheon · 50:11 ↗ · In the archive
“I actually think that the most likely outcome is that humanity will last for a long time…”
— Elon Musk, 23 March 2011 · Watch: The Economist Ideas Economy: Innovation (Berkeley) · 2:13 ↗ · In the archive