Elon Musk’s SpaceX intends to launch its first AI1 satellites - dubbed orbital data centers - next year, following its record-breaking IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.

SpaceX makes its debut on the Nasdaq market today, having pre-sold 556 million shares at $135 per share, valuing the company at $1.77trn. It is the largest IPO in Wall Street history.

Shares in SpaceX, which will appear under the symbol SPCX, have yet to begin trading at the time of writing, but are expected to sell for well above the IPO price. Update: The company has gone public.

Musk, who is set to become the world’s first trillionaire on the back of the IPO, has touted SpaceX’s ability to build data centers in space as one of the reasons investors should buy into his company.

It believes space is the best solution to the soaring compute demands of AI systems, and has filed plans to launch up to one million satellites as a data center megaconstellation, although critics have doubted the feasibility of the effort.

Earlier this week, the first details of what the company says is a space data center, the AI1 satellite, were released.

Speaking to CNBC ahead of the IPO, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell said the first AI1 units would launch in late 2027, but that the company intends to put compute on its Starlink broadband and Starlink mobile satellites prior to the AI1’s debut.

“Want to make sure we understand the operation,” Shotwell said. “We love doing kind of canary sets and canary work before we fly the real thing.”

SpaceX claims each AI1 craft will be able to handle an average of 120kW of compute. The company intends to rent out compute from the satellites, as it has with its terrestrial data centers, striking major deals with Anthropic and Google in recent weeks. Musk combined SpaceX with xAI, his AI startup that makes the Grok chatbot, in February.

Shotwell told CNBC that the company “100 percent” sees itself as a competitor to the neoclouds, which provide AI data center space to the biggest AI companies.

“We are builders, we build our own launch vehicles, we build our launch sites, and we’re building data centers both on the ground as well as in orbit soon,” Shotwell said. “So, I look at ourselves as an infrastructure company.”

SpaceX celebrated its IPO by launching its Falcon 9 rocket, sending a batch of 29 Starlink satellites into space.