Elon Musk’s SpaceX has acquired xAI, the artificial intelligence start-up behind the chatbot Grok that is also owned by the tech billionaire. The move consolidates several of Musk’s major ventures, bringing his rockets, social media company X, Grok and SpaceX’s satellite Internet subsidiary Starlink under a single umbrella.
The merger could boost Musk’s plans to power next-generation AI from space using an orbital data center made up of as many as one million satellites. It also catapults the worth of the combined entity to a reported $1.25 trillion.
“Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centers, which require immense amounts of power and cooling,” read a memo that was signed by Musk and posted to SpaceX’s website on Monday. “Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment.”
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The memo touted SpaceX’s still in development Starship, which, Musk has claimed, will one day enable hourly launches, each carrying as much as 200 tons of material into orbit. But Starship’s ability to launch satellites into orbit is largely unproven, and the spacecraft’s development is behind schedule. And it remains unclear what form SpaceX’s proposed satellites would take.
Regardless of how SpaceX plans to launch and operate its orbital data center network—the firm has offered scant details—the idea has a grand advantage over Earth-based facilities: the abundance of solar energy. “It’s always sunny in space!” Musk wrote.