On June 24, 2026, Elon Musk announced on the X platform that SpaceX’s orbital AI data center project had been officially dubbed “Starmind.” This ambitious initiative envisions deploying up to 1 million computing satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) to establish a space-based distributed computing network. By capitalizing on the benefits of space-based cooling, the project aims to overcome the limitations of terrestrial resources, offering robust computing support for the training and inference of large AI models. This move has the potential to fundamentally transform the competitive landscape of global computing infrastructure.

Each satellite within the Starmind network will boast a computing capacity of 120kW, with the capability to peak at 150kW. The hardware underpinning these satellites, codenamed AI1, has already been disclosed. These satellites will integrate seamlessly with the existing Starlink network via high-speed optical links, facilitating collaborative space-ground computing and efficient data relay.