Why SpaceX Wants a “Sentient Sun”

SpaceX just placed one of the strangest orders in its history.

On Nov. 10, German equipment maker Singulus revealed that SpaceX had ordered a production line for solar cells. The first line alone is worth more than €60 million, and SpaceX says the full order adds up to gear that can turn out 100 gigawatts of solar cells a year.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explained why: it’s “for Starmind to create a sentient sun.”

Starmind is SpaceX’s plan to put AI data centers in orbit.

Each satellite would run on sunlight and carry up to 250 kilowatts of computing power on solar wings about 75 meters wide, roughly the wingspan of a jumbo jet.

SpaceX has asked regulators for permission to operate up to 1 million of them. The company is aiming for first tests in late 2027, though its own IPO filing pointed to 2028 at the earliest.

It sounds like science fiction…

But it raises a very real question: how do you protect all that data?

Today’s encryption works because no normal computer could crack it fast enough to matter. A big enough quantum computer could change that.

And that day may be closer than most people think.

Last month, quantum computing company Alice & Bob estimated that a machine with fewer than 23,000 qubits could crack RSA-2048, one of the main types of encryption banks use, in about three days.

In 2023, the same team thought it would take 350,000 qubits.

That’s a 93% drop in just three years.

No such machine exists yet, and the study hasn’t been peer reviewed. But the direction is clear.

That’s why Washington is taking it seriously. NIST, the agency that sets U.S. encryption standards, will phase out today’s vulnerable encryption after 2030 and ban it after 2035.

My view is that as computing power spreads from Earth to orbit, protecting data becomes one of the biggest businesses of the next decade.

That’s why I’m investing in a small private company built to defend against AI and quantum threats.

It plans to go public on the Nasdaq in early 2027 (a listing isn’t guaranteed), and right now you can still invest while it’s private.

See how to get in here.

Ian Wyatt