Prices Up 195%. Waitlists to 2031. Welcome to AI’s Power Panic.
Baltimore, MD, Oct. 18, 2026 -- AI companies are paying for power plants they can’t get for years.
Turbine makers are charging fees just to save a spot in line. GE Vernova, one of the biggest in the world, is offering delivery slots as far out as 2031. And turbine costs are up more than 195% since 2019, according to Wood Mackenzie.
So Big Tech is fighting over the power plants that already exist.
In a new free presentation, tech analyst James Altucher says Elon Musk is walking away from that fight entirely. Musk, he says, “went where the power is limitless. Space.”
You Can Buy the Chips. You Can’t Buy the Power.
Lay it out side by side and it almost sounds like a joke.
A tech company can order servers and draw up a new data center fast. The power to run it moves on a much slower clock. Turbines, power lines, permits and grid hookups can eat up years.
Altucher says the stakes are huge. Just one data center, he says, can use as much power as 840,000 homes. “And this is putting the entire AI industry at risk,” he says.
Everyone Is Hunting for Shortcuts
So the industry is getting creative. Buying up old plants. Signing private power deals. Installing fuel cells. Anything that gets electricity to the servers faster.
Musk’s answer is the boldest of them all: move the computing into space. Altucher admits most people will doubt it at first. “Elon sees possibilities the rest of us are trained to call impossible,” he says.
Why Space Looks Less Crazy Every Month
It sounds extreme. Until you look at the other options.
When companies are buying power plants, building their own generation, waiting years for turbines and paying billions to lock up electricity, endless sunlight in orbit starts to look a lot less crazy.
Up there, Altucher says, “solar panels work up to eight times better than on Earth.”
And Musk has something no one else does. He already owns the rockets and the launch sites. And according to Altucher, he “controls the world’s most powerful, private satellite array… And no one else is even close.”
Altucher also points to the SpaceX filing with the FCC, which he says states that “within a few years the lowest cost to generate AI [power] will be in space.”
Escaping One Bottleneck Creates Another
Leaving the power fight behind doesn’t make every problem go away.
A network of computers in space still has to move huge amounts of data. Between satellites. Between chips. Back down to Earth. That takes specialized technology that can link it all together fast.
That, Altucher says, is the one piece Musk didn’t build himself. Why leave it out when he built everything else? “Time,” Altucher says. Building it alone would have taken years, and Musk couldn’t wait.
So, Altucher says, Musk turned to an outside supplier he already trusted. And Altucher’s pitch isn’t to buy SpaceX. It’s to look at that supplier, a small company he says “goes right along with” Musk.
About This Presentation
Altucher’s free presentation explains why he sees SpaceX as far more than a rocket company, walks through the evidence behind Musk’s orbital AI ambitions and shows where he believes the overlooked opportunity sits. Available free, on demand. Watch it here.
About James Altucher
James Altucher is a Wall Street veteran who has spent more than 30 years working where technology and money meet. He has managed hedge funds, designed his own AI-driven trading algorithms and raised capital for venture investments. He’s been featured on CNBC, Fox Business and in The Wall Street Journal. He also hosts The James Altucher Show podcast, where he has interviewed some of the biggest names in finance and business.