Can orbital data centers help justify a massive valuation for SpaceX?

SpaceX has reportedly filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering in which the company would raise $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation. And according to CEO Elon Musk, orbital data centers will be a big part of SpaceX’s future.

On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed Musk’s vision, as well as other companies that are pursuing similar goals.

It will take significant tech development and massive capital spending to make orbital data centers a reality, but as Sean noted, with “opposition happening around the country to data centers in general,” executives like Musk and Jeff Bezos may be thinking, “The engineering challenge may be less than the social challenge back here” on Earth.

Read a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.

Sean: This has been a trend — I would say a rapidly forming trend — over the last half year to a year, and we have different examples of it. We have SpaceX; I feel like in some ways, Elon Musk was late on this trend.  And for the moment, let’s set aside the actual mechanics and the viability of data centers in space. We could talk about that in a second if we want, but — 

Kirsten: We have a really good story we’ll link to in the show notes, by the way. One of our most recent hires, Tim Fernholz, is amazing. He writes all about the physics and the constraints of that.

Sean: Yeah, I think it’s a really interesting engineering challenge. It’s a really interesting physics challenge. It’s a really interesting orbital mechanics challenge. But it’s something that clearly a bunch of companies and people are going to try and chase. [There’s] going to be SpaceX doing it, with a kind of variance of what they’re already working on with their Starlink network. 

There’s a startup that had come out of Y Combinator, originally called Starcloud, that was really one of the first ones out there trying to build a huge business around this, that just raised $170 million this week, their valuation [on] that tipped them over into a unicorn status.

Jeff Bezos is trying to go after this as well. This is a next generation version of the competition that we’ve seen happening between Starlink and Amazon’s Leo satellite network, and Blue Origin has its own satellite network coming online as well in the next couple of years.

So there’s going to be a whole bunch of this happening, and it feels like it wasn’t happening a year ago. I know the way that Elon Musk pitches it is — we know he’s allergic to red tape, he’s built a data center in Memphis, too. Maybe now he knows the challenges and the risks you have to take to sidestep that red tape.

There’s a lot of opposition happening around the country to data centers in general. And these people say, “We have access to space, so let’s just try and do it up there.” The engineering challenge may be less than the social challenge back here on our [planet].

Kirsten: And it also creates excitement, right? If a company is about to go [public] and they’re working on data centers in space, this is something that people can have expectations about in a positive way and ignore the constraints. It feels like a company that is working on something that’s not old and outdated, but signals the future. And it’s really a great strategy when you think about it.

Anthony: Not that Elon Musk is the only one who does this, but it seems like he’s incredibly successful at being like, “Don’t judge my companies based on how much money they’re making now, judge them based on these grand visions that I can spin out about what will happen in the future.” 

And going back to a point that Sean was making, I think that part of what’s interesting is to [ask]: How does this fit in with the broader data center rollout? How does it fit in with opposition and the idea that maybe people are not going to be able to build as many data centers as they want to? 

I don’t think any of us are engineers who can really assess the viability of these plans. It does certainly have a tinge of fantasy to it, but even when they do lay out these plans, it feels like just a drop in the bucket in terms of compute capabilities compared to what they want to build out on Earth. So it feels like there’s not a scenario where this replaces a whole bunch of new data centers on Earth. It’s just sort of a […] supplement to it.

Sean: The last two things I’ll point out that are really front and center for me is, one, we’ve seen a backing off in some ways [from] data centers — not just because of opposition, but because maybe we don’t need as much, right? We see a bunch of jockeying from some of the AI labs about, “Well, maybe we don’t need to lease this much from this company,” or whatever. And if that becomes a thing that is more true than it was five months ago, do you all of a sudden lose all that momentum to do something as crazy as putting the data centers in space? Providing that it works, even.

The other thing is that the idea of building these massive data centers in space, with all these satellites that make up the quote unquote “data center,” is business for SpaceX.  And I think this is unique to them compared to these other companies: They are a launch company primarily, even though they generate a bunch of revenue from Starlink. They are the vehicle that gets the data centers to space. They get to book that as revenue for SpaceX. 

And so it becomes this thing where, of course [Musk] wants — whether or not it works, he would eventually have to prove it — but of course he wants to send more and more satellites into space because it’s more revenue for SpaceX. And that makes SpaceX look better as a public company. And then you just kind of tumble down the path until he finds something else to pitch the investors on.