Gavin Baker, managing partner and Chief Investment Officer at Atreides Management and an early SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) investor has said the rocket startup’s next growth phase may hinge on deploying AI compute infrastructure into orbit, a concept he calls “orbital compute.”

Baker, speaking to CNBC on Friday, said a severe global compute shortage is “growing more severe by the day,” making the case for space-based infrastructure increasingly urgent.

The Cost Math That Makes Space Compute Compelling

Baker estimated that SpaceX's Starship, once reusable, would bring launch costs to roughly $5 billion per gigawatt, putting orbital compute at around $30 billion per gigawatt versus $60 billion on Earth.

He argued that power, cooling, land, and infrastructure account for roughly $25 billion of a terrestrial gigawatt-scale build and are simply not needed in space. “It costs 30 billion to put a gigawatt of compute in space relative to 60 billion ...