SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to The Information, stating that the report was inaccurate and that the company is rapidly accelerating. The original post suggested that the expansion of ground-based AI data centers was slowing down. He did not provide new capacity figures in this response.

The company is also advancing the orbital data centers launched by Starship. The Starmind project plans to begin deployment and scale next year, with a maximum declaration of 1 million units. CFO Bret Johnsen stated at a Goldman Sachs conference on September 10 that ground data centers aim to achieve 5 to 10 gigawatts by 2027, with orbital capacity following. At the International Astronautical Congress, it was noted that each satellite has about 250 kilowatts, with approximately 10 clustered together, and within each cluster about 10 terabits per second.

On the ground side, there are already two Colossus facilities in Memphis and Southaven, Mississippi, with a third named Minihard. By the end of June, the computing power was 1.4 gigawatts, up from 0.4 gigawatts a year ago. In the second quarter, AI infrastructure spending was approximately $15.8 billion. Google pays $920 million monthly at full capacity, corresponding to about 110,000 NVIDIA graphics processors, with a delivery deadline of September 30.

The Information previously reported that some sites in Tennessee and Mississippi had been without backup power and cooling for months. Macrohard has used over 100 mobile cooling units, with an online rate below the internal target of 99.9%. In Mississippi, the delay of 41 permanent units has caused temporary gas turbines to run beyond their expected duration. Jake Palmer, the head of infrastructure, left in July, and Kevin Holland, a veteran of Starship, took over, with the task of ramping up the next six phases of computing power by the end of the year.

One facility in Memphis is said to exceed 2 gigawatts. Musk himself is living in a trailer on-site to monitor the construction. He also mentioned that the company is building its own turbine blade factory in Texas, reducing the lead time for new gas turbines by up to 18 months.

The buyers are Google, which purchases computing power monthly, and self-use model training, while the sellers are the power grid, gas turbines, and NVIDIA chips. The event was driven by the denial of the "slowdown" report, with funding continuing to flow into construction and orbital launches, rather than being paused. Beneficiaries include chips, turbines, and Starship launches, while the local power grid and the online rate supported by temporary units are under pressure.

Source: Public Information