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Elon Musk wants Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) to add 10 gigawatts of AI computing power next year, built entirely on Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) hardware. Price that plan with Nvidia’s own numbers, and one customer’s shopping list comes out bigger than the chip giant’s entire expected growth.

That’s the math laid out by independent market-analysis newsletter StreetSignal, which argues one customer’s ambitions “could account for virtually all NVIDIA’s projected growth.” Here’s how.

Nvidia’s Giant Growth Target

In August, Nvidia forecast roughly 70% revenue growth for fiscal 2028, which ends in early 2028. It was the company’s first-ever year-ahead outlook, and analysts had expected 44%.

Nvidia called it a supply-constrained outlook: customers want more than it can make. By StreetSignal’s count, Wall Street now expects Nvidia’s annual sales to rise by about $292 billion, to roughly $703 billion.

Musk’s 10-Gigawatt Shopping List

AI data centers are sized by the electricity they draw, in gigawatts. More gigawatts means more chips.

SpaceX had 1.7 gigawatts at the end of September, and its finance chief expects 2.5 to 3 by year-end. On the Oct. 20 earnings call, Musk said he’d be “surprised if we brought on less than 13 gigawatts of compute” by the end of 2027. That’s roughly 10 more.

In August, Musk committed SpaceX to building exclusively on Nvidia. On Oct. 25, he said SpaceX had closed $40 billion of debt financing to buy GPUs.

Nvidia has said each gigawatt of its Vera Rubin systems represents about $40 billion of revenue opportunity, chips and networking included.

The Cautious Case: 7 Gigawatts

Here’s where that figure comes in. Every gigawatt of new computing SpaceX builds on Nvidia’s newest systems means roughly $40 billion of equipment the rockets-to-AI company must buy from the chip giant.

StreetSignal starts cautiously. It assumes SpaceX adds only 7 gigawatts of new computing in 2027, not the 10 Musk has projected. At $40 billion per gigawatt, the firm would need to buy about $280 billion of Nvidia equipment.

But Nvidia’s forecast is about growth, and SpaceX is already a big customer. So StreetSignal subtracts what it assumes Musk’s firm spends with the chipmaker this fiscal year, about $75 billion. That figure prices SpaceX’s roughly 3 gigawatts of year-end capacity at $25 billion per gigawatt, the rate for Nvidia’s current Blackwell systems.

Now, $280 billion minus $75 billion leaves $205 billion. That’s how much more SpaceX would spend with Nvidia in fiscal 2028, about 70% of the $292 billion in overall sales growth Wall Street expects for the semiconductor firm.

That would leave just $87 billion of growth for all of Nvidia’s other customers combined, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle.

The Full Plan: 10 Gigawatts

Now assume SpaceX hits Musk’s full target of 10 new gigawatts in 2027. At $40 billion per gigawatt, the company would need to buy about $400 billion of Nvidia equipment.

Subtract the same $75 billion, and SpaceX’s spending with Nvidia would rise by $325 billion.

That’s $33 billion more than the $292 billion Wall Street expects Nvidia’s total sales to grow. For that forecast to hold, Nvidia’s other customers combined would have to cut their Nvidia purchases by $33 billion.

But Big Buyers Want More

They’re doing the opposite. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in the company’s August earnings call that the five biggest cloud companies are expected to lift capital spending from $800 billion this year to $1.3 trillion in 2027.

SpaceX also expects a big share of Nvidia’s limited supply. In the company’s August earnings call, Musk said, “our understanding with NVIDIA is that we will receive a very significant percent of their GPUs next year.”

Remember, Nvidia says it can’t make enough equipment to meet demand. If supply is that tight, StreetSignal argues, “somebody isn’t getting the GPUs they expect,” and that isn’t yet showing up in other companies’ forecasts.

StreetSignal’s Question for Wall Street

StreetSignal stresses it isn’t making a bearish call on Nvidia, and it flags two reasons its math is approximate.

First, some spending can be counted twice. StreetSignal points to Google, which rents computing power from SpaceX: SpaceX buys the Nvidia equipment, and Google pays SpaceX to use it. Nvidia makes that sale only once, so adding up every company’s AI spending plans can overstate how much Nvidia equipment is actually being bought.

Second, timing. Musk’s target counts computing switched on during calendar 2027, while Nvidia’s fiscal 2028 runs from roughly February 2027 to January 2028. And equipment is bought before it’s switched on.

StreetSignal’s bigger question is about Nvidia’s stock. By its count, Nvidia trades at about 13 times the profit analysts expect it to earn in fiscal 2028. A company forecasting 70% growth doesn’t usually trade that cheaply, StreetSignal says; such a price suggests “the best part of the cycle may already be behind it.”

“If all these assumptions are right, why are the stocks so cheap?” StreetSignal asks. It wants Wall Street analysts to reconcile the numbers rather than “simply raise another NVIDIA price target.”

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