GM. This is Milk Road AI, where we follow the power, the physics, and the trillion-dollar bets reshaping the future of AI.

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If you earn $63,795 per year (the current U.S. average), how long do you think it would take you to save up $952 billion?

Can I get a drum roll, please! 

It would take you roughly 14.9 Million years.

You might be thinking, why are we ruining your morning with this depressing arithmetic?

Because SpaceX is gearing up for a 2026 IPO, and Elon’s net worth could rocket to $952 billion, breaking records like Michael Phelps at the Beijing Olympics.

We’re staring down the barrel of a massive $1.5 trillion valuation, roughly 3X OpenAI and 3X ByteDance (TikTok).

If this deal goes through, Elon’s 42% stake in SpaceX combined with his Tesla shares and other holdings will catapult him past the richest man on Earth.

And from there, he launches straight into the world’s first trillionaire territory.

But here is the twist: He isn’t doing it to buy a golden yacht the size of Rhode Island. 

He’s doing it because we have reached the physical limits of Earth, and he needs a war chest to fund a project that gives full mad-scientist energy: 

He wants to turn outer space into a massive, orbiting network of AI data centers.

(Trust me, you’re going to want the details on this.)

For years, Musk swore SpaceX would stay private forever. 

Once you become a publicly traded company, every explosion comes with an investor call and Musk wasn’t about to host a webinar titled “Why the Rocket Blew Up And Why That’s Fine”.

So, why the sudden U-turn?

In a word: AI.

Elon has realized that the race for AI is actually just a race for power.

You see, AI chips (like NVIDIA’s H200s) are hungry. 

They don't just sip power, they chug it. 

And right now, Earth is struggling to pay the bar tab.

Just look at the numbers: U.S. data center capacity (built or planned) just hit a record ~80 gigawatts in 2025.

To put that in perspective, that is enough energy to power 60 MILLION homes.

We are building so fast that we’re literally running out of plugs, drinking up entire rivers for cooling, and nearly crashing local power grids.

So, Musk looked up at the sky and realized that 300 miles up, the two biggest problems of AI (power and heat) don’t exist. 

Think of it as the ultimate physics cheat code.

On Earth, solar power is annoying. 

You have clouds… rain… that inconvenient little thing called ‘night’.

And to run a data center 24/7 on solar, you need massive, expensive batteries.

In orbit? The sun never sets. 

It is a 24/7 nuclear fusion reactor blasting your satellites with pure, free energy. 

No clouds. No night. Just unlimited juice, forever.

And the cooling? Even better.

Data centers on Earth are like a crowded nightclub that’s hot, sweaty, and expensive to keep cool. 

We spend billions on giant fans and water pumps. 

In space? It’s a vacuum sitting at -454°F. You don't need an A/C unit in that kind of environment. 

You just open a window (metaphorically) and let the heat radiate away into the infinite void.

Capital from this IPO isn't for office snacks or nicer chairs. 

It’s to fund a plan that escalates from clever engineering to sci-fi madness faster than you can say "blast off".

According to Musk, the roadmap has two phases and together they make today’s data centers look like dial-up internet.

Here is the actual blueprint straight from Elon himself. 

If reading this makes your brain hurt, don't sweat it, we translated it into plain English below.

Phase 1 is already happening: SpaceX is currently redesigning its Starlink satellites to be flying data centers (Starlink V3).

To understand why this is a massive deal, you have to realize how "dumb" satellites have been for the last 60 years.

Right now, satellites are basically just giant mirrors floating in the sky. 

You shoot a signal up (a text, a video, a stock trade), and the satellite just bounces it back down to another spot on Earth. 

It doesn't know what the data is, it just reflects it.

The new V3 satellites are different. They have advanced AI chips inside them. 

When you send data up, they don't just bounce it back, they process it right there in orbit.

They talk to each other using fast lasers, passing data between satellites like a game of hot potato in space.

By processing data in the vacuum of space, where light travels 40% faster than in fiber cables, you cut out the middleman and beam down only the answers.

That matters because it slashes delay and congestion. 

Instead of bouncing data through crowded Earth-based networks, the computation happens in orbit, so only the finished result comes back down. 

The payoff is faster responses, lower bandwidth costs, and AI systems that can scale without being limited by Earth’s power grids or internet infrastructure.

But here is the catch: You can’t just FedEx a supercomputer to space.

You need a big truck. And SpaceX happens to own the biggest truck in human history: Starship.

Most rockets are like small moving vans, they can fit a couch and a lamp. 

Starship is a container ship. 

It is designed to carry massive, heavy payloads like thousands of AI-heavy satellites.

SpaceX is set to launch ~90% of the world’s payload mass into space this year, so it is pretty much Earth’s space program according to Musk.

Phase 2 is where you might want to sit down.

Musk explicitly said the next level is building factories on the Moon.

Why? Because of the gravity tax.

Launching heavy servers from Earth is expensive because Earth’s gravity fights you every inch of the way. 

The Moon, however, has very weak gravity, making it the perfect place to build heavy stuff.

The plan is to send Starships to the Moon, use robots to build satellites out of moon rocks, and then launch them into space using a Mass Driver.

"What is a Mass Driver?" you ask. It’s basically a giant electromagnetic railgun.

Instead of using expensive rocket fuel, you use magnets to yeet a satellite off the lunar surface at thousands of miles per hour.

Musk says this is the only way to reach "Kardashev Type II" status which is fancy nerd-speak for a civilization so advanced it can harness all the energy of its own sun.

(It sounds like the plot of a video game, but hey, never bet against the guy who catches the rockets he launches.)

And of course, Elon isn't the only one looking at the stars and seeing a giant hard drive. 

Jeff Bezos is secretly working on "gigawatt-scale" orbital data centers too. 

Translation: I want to own the cloud in the clouds.

Even Google is testing radiation hardened chips for space. 

The race is on but when SpaceX finally shows up on the public markets in 2026, investors won’t look at it like a normal stock.

This is the rare kind of company that offers two things at once:

Most stocks promise modest returns.

SpaceX promises a seat at the table while the future gets built.

Alright, it’s time to vote. Is SpaceX a $1.5 trillion bargain, or are we all just hallucinating?

Hit reply and tell us:

Stay thirsty (and look up), my friends. 🥛

In the Rollup this past Friday, Patrick & Duncan sat down to talk about how edge AI, power infrastructure, and GPU policy are shaping the U.S.–China AI race.

Here’s what you’ll hear:

Tune in and see for yourself 👇

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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