NVIDIA has publicly expressed appreciation to SpaceX and Elon Musk for being one of the first to test its innovative Vera CPU, a processor crafted for agent-based artificial intelligence. An announcement on X quickly amassed tens of millions of views within just a few hours.
On Monday, May 18, NVIDIA's official account shared, “Thanks @SpaceX and @elonmusk, excited for you to try out the NVIDIA Vera CPU.” Furthering the announcement, the company's AI Infrastructure account, @NVIDIAAIInfra, added, “This is just the beginning for Vera, our CPU designed specifically for agent-based AI. Thanks to @elonmusk and the SpaceX team.”
Elon Musk humorously replied on Tuesday with a pun: “Vera nice, Vera nice…”, cleverly playing on the processor's name and the Italian phrase meaning “very good.”
Exclusive Delivery Tour by NVIDIA's Ian Buck
The delivery to SpaceX was part of a special tour conducted on Friday, May 15, by Ian Buck, NVIDIA's Vice President. Buck personally delivered the first Vera CPU units to four key clients: Anthropic in San Francisco, OpenAI in Mission Bay, SpaceX in Palo Alto, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Santa Clara, wrapping up the journey on Monday, May 18.
During his visit to SpaceX's Palo Alto facilities, Musk examined the system, inquiring about the cores, memory, and cooling system of the processor, according to NVIDIA’s official blog detailing the delivery.
Unveiling the Vera CPU
Officially announced on January 5, 2026, the Vera CPU is NVIDIA's first custom processor for data centers. It features 88 custom “Olympus” cores compatible with Arm architecture, up to 1.5 TB of LPDDR5X memory, a memory bandwidth of up to 1.2 TB/s, and second-generation NVLink-C2C connectivity with 1.8 TB/s bidirectional bandwidth between CPU and GPU, seven times faster than PCIe Gen 6.
The processor is integral to the Vera Rubin platform, NVIDIA's next-gen AI systems for data centers, where Vera serves as the orchestration CPU and Rubin as the computing GPU. NVIDIA is targeting this chip for advanced training workloads, AI agents, analytics, cloud, and storage—what the company calls “AI factories.”
NVIDIA's Strategic Ties with Musk
The connection between Musk and NVIDIA runs deep: SpaceX is a direct hardware client, while Musk's AI company, xAI—established in 2023—operates the Colossus supercluster in Memphis, Tennessee, leveraging tens of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs to train its Grok models. By delivering the Vera CPU to SpaceX instead of xAI, NVIDIA positions the aerospace company as a trailblazer in adopting its next-gen CPU infrastructure for agent-based AI.
Summing up the significance of the moment, NVIDIA AI Infrastructure’s account captured the forward-looking sentiment: “This is just the beginning for Vera.”
Key Insights into NVIDIA's Vera CPU and Its Impact
What is the NVIDIA Vera CPU designed for?
The NVIDIA Vera CPU is specifically designed for agent-based artificial intelligence applications, making it suitable for advanced training workloads, AI agents, analytics, and cloud storage.
Why was SpaceX chosen as one of the first testers of the Vera CPU?
SpaceX was selected as a pioneer in testing the Vera CPU due to its direct relationship with NVIDIA and its role as a leader in adopting new technologies for agent-based AI.