Wall Street pegs orbital data centers at up to $170B per GW; SpaceX camp says models repeat Starlink mistakes
elonmusk · x · 2026-09-20
TeslaLarry rounds up Street estimates for orbital data centers: Wood Mac $170B/GW, BofA $160-180B/GW, Futurum $72B for infrastructure alone, BNP >$100B just to launch 1 GW. He argues these are the same spreadsheet genre that "proved" Starlink couldn't work: Starlink succeeded because Falcon 9's real cost ran far below list price and V2/V3 satellites outran early bandwidth assumptions. AI satellites will rhyme — Gen-2/3 hardware (better chips, power, thermal per kg) will pull away from the models, with Starship collapsing launch costs.
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