SpaceXAI Adopts NVIDIA Vera CPU, Targets 2027 Orbit Launch

SpaceXAI will deploy NVIDIA Vera CPUs to run the tool-use, code, and data work behind its next agentic AI apps, and Elon Musk said the companies have designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in the fourth quarter of 2027, with significant scale in 2028.

“SpaceX, in partnership with Nvidia, has designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with significant scale in 2028,” Musk wrote on X, quoting NVIDIA’s own announcement.

NVIDIA said Monday that SpaceXAI is bringing “the first CPU built for AI agents” into one of the largest AI deployments in the world. Agentic systems lean on CPUs between model calls to orchestrate tools, execute code, process data, and run simulations. Vera is meant to speed that layer so GPUs stay fed. The company also said SpaceXAI is expanding Grok’s infrastructure on the Vera Rubin platform as it scales toward gigawatts of compute on Earth, and that the first-generation Starmind AI satellite will be based on an optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system.

“Agentic AI requires a new kind of computing system — one built not only to generate answers, but to take action,” said Ian Buck, NVIDIA’s vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing. “Vera gives AI agents the CPU performance to act in real time. SpaceXAI is taking this architecture from massive AI factories to the next frontier of computing in orbit.”

SpaceXAI president Mike Nicolls said Vera’s CPU performance and memory bandwidth let the company run “enormous amounts of orchestration, code and data processing while keeping GPUs doing what they do best.”

That orbital piece extends the SpaceX–NVIDIA Starmind hardware pairing already outlined for AI1 satellites, and it sits under the xAI-into-SpaceXAI merger that put Grok and orbital compute under one roof. Musk’s Q4 2027 launch window is the first public flight date attached to a space-tuned NVL72 rack.