SpaceX and NVIDIA are joining forces to launch a version of NVIDIA's Vera Rubin NVL72 system into space, with the first orbital deployment targeted for the fourth quarter of 2027 and meaningful scale following in 2028. The announcement didn't sit well with investors on day one, though — NVIDIA shares fell 2.91% to $208.48, while SpaceX stock slipped 1.44% to $135 before dropping another 0.22% in after-hours trading to $134.70.
What's Going Into Orbit
The centerpiece is the Vera CPU, which packs 88 NVIDIA-designed Olympus cores and up to 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth. NVIDIA claims the chip can finish tasks up to 1.8 times faster than comparable x86 processors. For this mission, the system is being re-engineered for space, and Elon Musk described the design as "significantly simpler, lower cost, denser and lighter than a traditional rack."
SpaceX will pair the Vera chip with NVIDIA's broader Vera Rubin platform. The plan is to run Grok, Musk's AI model, on a computing network that can scale toward gigawatt-level capacity — a step beyond anything currently operating on Earth.
Why Shares Dipped
The day's selloff wasn't directly blamed on the partnership itself. Instead, traders pointed to a pile-up of broader pressures: NVIDIA's upcoming earnings report, rising memory costs, and lingering uncertainty about exports to China. SpaceX is also still dealing with the kind of volatility that often follows a recent IPO.
SpaceX went public in June, pricing at $135. That's exactly where the stock closed on announcement day. The stock has traded wildly since the debut — it reached a peak of $225.64 and dropped to an all-time low of $104.83 just earlier this month, on August 3. The after-hours slip to $134.70, putting it right back at its IPO price, is a reminder of just how jumpy the stock has been.
Grok Goes Big — and Goes Up
This isn't just about putting a chip in space. SpaceX and NVIDIA are pairing the Vera CPU with the full Vera Rubin platform to build out what they're calling the Grok infrastructure toward gigawatt-level computing capacity. That's a serious step up from the ground-based data centers we're used to. Space offers some advantages: cooling is different, and solar power can be harvested more directly, though the companies didn't detail those specifics in their announcement.
The claim is that the space-optimized design is simpler and cheaper to build than a traditional rack, which could change how big AI systems are deployed in the future. But that's a long way off — the launch is still two years away, and true scale won't hit until 2028.
What Happens Next
NVIDIA's next earnings report lands on August 26, just two days after this announcement. That's likely to be the next big test for the stock, and investors will be watching closely to see if the company can get past the memory-cost headwinds and China export questions that have been weighing on the sector. The orbital project, meanwhile, will need to prove it can move from concept to launch pad — and then to gigawatt-scale — without hitting the sort of delays that often plague space hardware.
