terafab
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Climbing the Kardashev Scale: SpaceX AI Satellites and the Terafab
In a SpaceX studio sit-down at the company's Bastrop, Texas facility, Elon Musk and Starlink engineer Ian join a host to connect the dots between Starship, Starlink solar technology, and a bold plan to put AI compute in orbit. Musk frames the effort using the Kardashev scale, arguing that humanity currently harnesses less than a trillionth of the sun's power and must move to space to ascend it. The team outlines three limiting factors to solve at scale, mass to orbit, solar power, and chips, and unveils a draft design for a SpaceX AI satellite delivering roughly 150 kW peak power. The conversation escalates from launching thousands of orbital compute satellites to building a 100-million-square-foot 'terafab' chip factory, and ultimately to lunar mass drivers that could fling AI satellites into deep space, scaling civilization's energy harvest toward a terawatt per year and beyond.
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell is the CEO and Co-Founder of Terabase Energy, a Berkeley-based company building the digital and automation platform for utility-scale solar. After 15 years at SunPower working across 200+ projects in 20 countries, he launched Terabase from his basement during the pandemic in 2019 - and within three months had secured an 800 MW project in Qatar. Today, backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Breakthrough Energy Ventures with $207M raised, Terabase's Terafab robotic assembly line is deploying solar at 2-minute cycle times, targeting 24/7 autonomous construction and a future where solar hits one cent per kilowatt-hour.