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I think the only moat in the future will be the scale of hardware deployment. If one company is able to deploy an order of magnitude more silicon, they'll have

I think the only moat in the future will be the scale of hardware deployment. If one company is able to deploy an order of magnitude more silicon, they'll have a firm grip on a SOTA model and massive inference usage. China or SpaceX seem like the 2 likely candidates in 5 years, but who knows.

GMoromisato 1mo ago
"Who knows" is the right answer, I think. If (a) demand for AI continues to increase, and (b) SpaceX can get to ~$100/kg to orbit, then they will have a ridiculously deep moat. Probably more like 10 years, though. But as you said, who knows.
- Rover222 1mo ago
  Yeah, very hard to predict the future at this point. But the Starship + Terrafab combo will be this type of order-of-magnitude-moat IF it works out. Big if. If it doesn't work out, I think China's exponential terrestrial energy deployment will eventually give them the lead, IF they can get enough chips. Another big if.
- t0mas88 1mo ago
  They will have moat in the satellite launching business, which is not useful in the AI datacenter market. You can put AI chips in datacenters in the desert for far less than $100/kg. With lots of solar power available, the option to easily access your hardware and far less radiation issues. The datacenter in space story really only exists to make it possible for Musk to sell X to SpaceX and make more money from the IPO. That's all. There is no engineering reason.
  - noja 1mo ago
    Any cooling issues to be resolved?
    - GMoromisato 1mo ago
      No. Cooling is probably the easiest problem to solve, easier than power. And in both cases, the problem is solved by mass to orbit. All you need for cooling is a big f-ing radiator. Solar panels are chips, and not trivial to manufacture. But a radiator is just a hunk of metal with some pipes. That's why the cost of mass to orbit is the most important thing. You can solve almost any space problem by just throwing more mass at it.
      - CamperBob2 1mo ago
        Any hardware that could be launched to orbit could also be put on a container ship in international waters. It makes zero sense to put these things in space.
        GMoromisato 1mo ago
        You can't deploy enough solar panels on a container ship to feed the datacenter, and a nuclear reactor, while not impossible, is far more expensive than solar panels. Solar panels are 4x more efficient in space. 2x because of lack of atmosphere and another 2x because there are 24 hours of sunlight in SSO. Is it really that hard to just say, "I don't know if it will work or not"?
        CamperBob2 1mo ago
        You can't deploy enough solar panels on a container ship to feed the datacenter Ridiculous. Have you ever seen a container ship? One engine on a container ship puts out 80 megawatts, or around 80 orbital data centers' worth of power. So if there's not enough room for solar, which would surprise me greatly, then running a generator is not going to be a problem. As for the lack of 24-hour operation, a ~50% duty cycle is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff for not having to launch something into LEO. You can easily deploy several times as many installations for the same money if they don't have to work in space. And they will be maintainable, to boot.
        1mo ago
  - chasd00 1mo ago
    > You can put AI chips in datacenters in the desert for far less than $100/kg if you can't put them outside of Amarillo Texas without people throwing a fit then you can't put them anywhere. I mean freaking Pantex is there ffs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantex
  - cameronh90 1mo ago
    It's not an engineering bet. Musk's bet is dysfunctional politics will make it impossible to build enough data centres and the energy needed to power them. There are many, many reasons that might be wrong. However, if the economics are even close to viable, they could start throwing up data centres quicker than anyone can build them terrestrially (at least in the democratic west).
    - porkpieshoe 1mo ago
      So to be clear, the prediction is that every single location on earth will be economically infeasible due to politics, and that these same politics will have no impact on the launch or satellite businesses? GMAFB. It's stock pump bullshit from a guy who has figured out how to extract the maximum from stock markets.
      - Rover222 1mo ago
        Meanwhile Nvidia just announced a space-optimized Vera Rubin designed with SpaceX designed for orbital datacenters. But yeah, I'm sure you people with Elon Derangement Syndrome actually have it all figured out /s https://x.com/nvidia/status/2091920680317046847 https://x.com/nvidia/status/2091920680317046847
        magicalist 1mo ago
        > Meanwhile Nvidia just announced a space-optimized Vera Rubin designed with SpaceX designed for orbital datacenters. well, no, they announced the concept of a space-optimized Vera Rubin designed with SpaceX: > NVIDIA and SpaceXAI are working to adapt that foundation to the requirements of orbital computing while preserving a common NVIDIA architecture and software ecosystem. The press release is really announcing that SpaceX's terrestrial data centres are going to use Vera Rubin. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/spacexai-adopts-nvidia-vera-cpu-to-accelerate-agentic-ai-at-massive-scale https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/spacexai-adopts-nvidia-ve...
  - GMoromisato 1mo ago
    Yours is the only valid argument. If space datacenters are not competitive with terrestrial (in terms of megatokens/$ or whatever), then they will never work and SpaceX will fail. That's the whole ball game. But anyone who thinks they can predict those prices in ten years is wildly overconfident.
    - qlte 1mo ago
      > then they will never work and SpaceX will fail Or, Elon pulls his classic narrative sleight of hand for like the 9th time and announces SpaceXesla is NOT a car, battery, solar, self-driving, robot, space launch, space datacenter, or AI company but now completely pivoting the business to [INSERT NEXT BIG THING] that will 100x the company in 6 months maybe, 6 years definitely. Space Datacenters eventually get quietly discontinued after finally killing the zombie brand at which point the only reaction is "huh, remember that?" https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/21/teslas-solar-roof-is-dead-heres-what-went-wrong/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/21/teslas-solar-roof-is-dead-...
      - GMoromisato 1mo ago
        Are you saying that if space datacenters fail then SpaceX stock will go up? Then it sounds like you should invest a lot of money in them. ETA: If you had invested $1,000 in 2016 when Tesla Roof was announced, you'd have $25,000 today. 25x return in 10 years.
      - Rover222 1mo ago
        remind me 3 years to laugh at how wrong you are

GMoromisato 1mo ago

"Who knows" is the right answer, I think. If (a) demand for AI continues to increase, and (b) SpaceX can get to ~$100/kg to orbit, then they will have a ridiculously deep moat. Probably more like 10 years, though. But as you said, who knows.

Rover222 1mo ago
Yeah, very hard to predict the future at this point. But the Starship + Terrafab combo will be this type of order-of-magnitude-moat IF it works out. Big if. If it doesn't work out, I think China's exponential terrestrial energy deployment will eventually give them the lead, IF they can get enough chips. Another big if.
t0mas88 1mo ago
They will have moat in the satellite launching business, which is not useful in the AI datacenter market. You can put AI chips in datacenters in the desert for far less than $100/kg. With lots of solar power available, the option to easily access your hardware and far less radiation issues. The datacenter in space story really only exists to make it possible for Musk to sell X to SpaceX and make more money from the IPO. That's all. There is no engineering reason.
- noja 1mo ago
  Any cooling issues to be resolved?
  - GMoromisato 1mo ago
    No. Cooling is probably the easiest problem to solve, easier than power. And in both cases, the problem is solved by mass to orbit. All you need for cooling is a big f-ing radiator. Solar panels are chips, and not trivial to manufacture. But a radiator is just a hunk of metal with some pipes. That's why the cost of mass to orbit is the most important thing. You can solve almost any space problem by just throwing more mass at it.
    - CamperBob2 1mo ago
      Any hardware that could be launched to orbit could also be put on a container ship in international waters. It makes zero sense to put these things in space.
      - GMoromisato 1mo ago
        You can't deploy enough solar panels on a container ship to feed the datacenter, and a nuclear reactor, while not impossible, is far more expensive than solar panels. Solar panels are 4x more efficient in space. 2x because of lack of atmosphere and another 2x because there are 24 hours of sunlight in SSO. Is it really that hard to just say, "I don't know if it will work or not"?
        CamperBob2 1mo ago
        You can't deploy enough solar panels on a container ship to feed the datacenter Ridiculous. Have you ever seen a container ship? One engine on a container ship puts out 80 megawatts, or around 80 orbital data centers' worth of power. So if there's not enough room for solar, which would surprise me greatly, then running a generator is not going to be a problem. As for the lack of 24-hour operation, a ~50% duty cycle is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff for not having to launch something into LEO. You can easily deploy several times as many installations for the same money if they don't have to work in space. And they will be maintainable, to boot.
        1mo ago
- chasd00 1mo ago
  > You can put AI chips in datacenters in the desert for far less than $100/kg if you can't put them outside of Amarillo Texas without people throwing a fit then you can't put them anywhere. I mean freaking Pantex is there ffs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantex
- cameronh90 1mo ago
  It's not an engineering bet. Musk's bet is dysfunctional politics will make it impossible to build enough data centres and the energy needed to power them. There are many, many reasons that might be wrong. However, if the economics are even close to viable, they could start throwing up data centres quicker than anyone can build them terrestrially (at least in the democratic west).
  - porkpieshoe 1mo ago
    So to be clear, the prediction is that every single location on earth will be economically infeasible due to politics, and that these same politics will have no impact on the launch or satellite businesses? GMAFB. It's stock pump bullshit from a guy who has figured out how to extract the maximum from stock markets.
    - Rover222 1mo ago
      Meanwhile Nvidia just announced a space-optimized Vera Rubin designed with SpaceX designed for orbital datacenters. But yeah, I'm sure you people with Elon Derangement Syndrome actually have it all figured out /s https://x.com/nvidia/status/2091920680317046847 https://x.com/nvidia/status/2091920680317046847
      - magicalist 1mo ago
        > Meanwhile Nvidia just announced a space-optimized Vera Rubin designed with SpaceX designed for orbital datacenters. well, no, they announced the concept of a space-optimized Vera Rubin designed with SpaceX: > NVIDIA and SpaceXAI are working to adapt that foundation to the requirements of orbital computing while preserving a common NVIDIA architecture and software ecosystem. The press release is really announcing that SpaceX's terrestrial data centres are going to use Vera Rubin. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/spacexai-adopts-nvidia-vera-cpu-to-accelerate-agentic-ai-at-massive-scale https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/spacexai-adopts-nvidia-ve...
- GMoromisato 1mo ago
  Yours is the only valid argument. If space datacenters are not competitive with terrestrial (in terms of megatokens/$ or whatever), then they will never work and SpaceX will fail. That's the whole ball game. But anyone who thinks they can predict those prices in ten years is wildly overconfident.
  - qlte 1mo ago
    > then they will never work and SpaceX will fail Or, Elon pulls his classic narrative sleight of hand for like the 9th time and announces SpaceXesla is NOT a car, battery, solar, self-driving, robot, space launch, space datacenter, or AI company but now completely pivoting the business to [INSERT NEXT BIG THING] that will 100x the company in 6 months maybe, 6 years definitely. Space Datacenters eventually get quietly discontinued after finally killing the zombie brand at which point the only reaction is "huh, remember that?" https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/21/teslas-solar-roof-is-dead-heres-what-went-wrong/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/21/teslas-solar-roof-is-dead-...
    - GMoromisato 1mo ago
      Are you saying that if space datacenters fail then SpaceX stock will go up? Then it sounds like you should invest a lot of money in them. ETA: If you had invested $1,000 in 2016 when Tesla Roof was announced, you'd have $25,000 today. 25x return in 10 years.
    - Rover222 1mo ago
      remind me 3 years to laugh at how wrong you are