For investors, AI and space are becoming more and more related

The space industry is becoming more and more connected to the AI boom, and investors have more access to it than ever before

For many investors, SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) marked a turning point and opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

The space exploration company made its historic June debut with an IPO valued at £1.77 trillion and a 50% increase in share price in the first three days of trading.

Since then, the share price of SpaceXs (NASDAQ:SPCX) has decreased, but investors' desire to invest in space is only growing as they now have more options than ever before.

The ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom is driving opportunities for space investment.

Watch the entire video at "Humans were placed on the Moon by Old Space." According to Mark Boggett, CEO of space tech investment company Seraphim Space, "new space is building the commercial infrastructure of the global economy." "One of the most alluring investment opportunities of the upcoming ten years is being created by the convergence of AI and space technology, as well as the growing demand for connectivity, defense, and sovereign capability."

How SpaceX and Nvidia are combining AI with space travel.

Although it's easy to think of space and artificial intelligence (AI) as two distinct topics, they are becoming more interconnected.

For instance, since merging with xAI, Elon Musk's AI startup and creator of the Grok LLM suite, earlier this year, SpaceX is primarily an AI business. In its IPO prospectus, SpaceX identified a £28.5 trillion total addressable market, of which £26.5 trillion was attributed to artificial intelligence. This is in contrast to £1.6 trillion for satellite connectivity and £370 billion for space launch services, which have traditionally been the cornerstones of SpaceX's business.

The idea of an orbital data centerbasically, a data center in spaceis one of the most obvious connections between the space and AI themes. These don't yet exist, but they might not be too far off: in August, Starcloud, a start-up committed to creating orbital data centers, raised £250 million at a £2.3 billion valuation.

Tech hardware behemoths Nvidia and Cisco are among the investors in Starcloud's most recent funding round.

"With Nvidia neatly hedging both sides by backing Starcloud and SpaceX's rival Starmind, orbital data centers have gone from science fair to a funded race in a matter of months," stated James Lockyer, a research analyst at investment bank Peel Hunt.

In particular, Nvidia is becoming more and more important to the designs of the space industry. During Nvidia's Q2 earnings call, Colette Kress, the company's chief financial officer, confirmed that SpaceX is one of several top partners to whom the company is shipping its most recent chip generation, Vera CPU.

Additionally, Nvidia owns a portion of SpaceX through a previous investment in xAI.

"The space cycle and the chip cycle are fusing," Lockyer stated. "The single most valuable name in AI is linked to the most valuable name in space through Nvidia's funding, supply, and equity in SpaceX. This makes SpaceX a compute story as much as a launch story for investors."

Investing strategies for the new space economy.

Investors now have more access than ever as the space industry grows. Other stocks that provide space exposure include Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) and AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS), even though SpaceX is the biggest company in the space industry and has been easily purchased since its IPO.

Thematic exchange-traded funds (ETF) such as the WisdomTree Space Economy UCITS ETF (LON:WSPG) or the Seraphim New Space UCITS ETF (LON:SERA), which debuted on September 2, provide access to companies like these.

The Seraphim New Space Index, which identifies and weights businesses in a variety of space investment ecosystem components, is the foundation of the Seraphim New Space UCITS ETF. SpaceX is one of its representative holdings, along with businesses like Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR), a space infrastructure company, and BlackSky (NYSE:BKSY), which provides "space-based intelligence" by instantly analyzing satellite imagery using AI and machine learning.

Additionally, the ETF has a stake in Seraphim Space Investment Trust (LON:SSIT), which saw a 56% increase in 2026 through August 28. Seraphims' investment trust primarily holds private space economy companies, in contrast to the ETF, which will primarily hold publicly traded companies.