2026-02-18XThread

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This is more AI Snake Oil from the Silicon Valley promoter class. Currently annual electricity costs for AI data centers are about $600K per MW, which is only about 5-7% of revenues on recently announced deals. Launch, radiation, insurance and redundancy costs would be greater. (2) And while grid power permitting is a current problem, it is rapidly being addressed in business-friendly jurisdictions. Actual power is in abundance in the US, particularly when energy companies partner w/private power producers, as we have seen in many recent deals. (3) So before you fall for the “Data Centers in Space” hype, ask your favorite Silicon Valley promoter to show some actual cost figures/savings, first.

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Elon Musk just put a 30-month timeline on data centers in space. Not a concept. A deadline. Gerstner: “You’re merging the two biggest TAMs in the world. All of artificial intelligence and all of space.” Every ceiling AI has ever hit comes down to one thing. Power. Land is finite. Cooling is expensive. Energy grids were never built for what this technology demands. Every major AI company on Earth is fighting over the same stressed infrastructure, competing for power that simply does not exist in sufficient supply. Space does not have that problem. Gerstner: “Power is the proxy, power is the primitive to AI.” Orbital data centers drawing unlimited solar energy do not improve the cost curve. They collapse it. No atmosphere. No weather. No darkness. Just continuous unfiltered energy. Forever. Starlink scales to 20 million people connected directly to their phones. xAI provides the intelligence. SpaceX provides the infrastructure. One person building both. Gerstner: “Elon is kind of an N of one. His ability to dream this and execute at this scale.” No comparison exists. Most companies spend lifetimes executing inside one industry. Musk is merging the two largest markets in human history into a single vertically integrated system powered by orbital infrastructure nobody else can build. Gerstner: “I’m glad he’s on Team America.” Whoever controls orbital infrastructure for AI and communications does not just win a market. They own the foundation everything runs on for generations. China sees this. Cannot replicate it. Reusable rockets plus frontier AI plus capital plus execution velocity do not exist together anywhere else on Earth. In 30 months the game changes permanently. The person who solved Earth’s energy constraint by leaving Earth just made every competitor’s roadmap irrelevant.
r0ck3t23 ↗