NEW YORK (AP) – Before Elon Musk combines his space exploration and artificial intelligence businesses into one company…
NEW YORK (AP) – Elon Musk plans to combine his space exploration and artificial intelligence businesses into a single company ahead of a major initial public offering later this year.
His rocket venture SpaceX announced on Monday that it had acquired xAI in a bid to help the world’s richest man control the rocketry and artificial intelligence businesses. The deal will bring together several of his services, including AI chatbot Grok, satellite communications company Starlink, and social media company X.
Musk has repeatedly talked about the need to accelerate the development of technology that allows data centers to operate in space, to solve the problem of overcoming the huge costs of electricity and other resources when building and running AI systems on Earth.
That goal, which Musk said when announcing the merger, could be made much easier to achieve with the combined company.
“In the long term, it’s clear that space-based AI is the only way to scale,” Musk wrote on SpaceX’s website on Monday, adding, “It’s always sunny in space!” referring to solar power.
Musk said in SpaceX’s announcement that he predicts that “within two to three years, the lowest-cost way to generate AI computing will be in space.”
This is not a prediction shared by many other companies building data centers, including Microsoft.
Asked about alternatives to building data centers in the U.S. amid growing community opposition, Microsoft President Brad Smith told The Associated Press last month: “I would be surprised if people moved from land to low-Earth orbit.”
SpaceX is not the first company to consider the idea of putting an AI data center in space. Last year, Google unveiled a new research project called “Project Suncatcher” that will put AI computer chips on solar-powered satellites.
Mississippi state officials announced last month that xAI would spend $20 billion to build a data center near the state border with Tennessee.
The data center will be called MACROHARDRR, likely a play on Microsoft’s name, and will be the company’s third data center in the greater Memphis area.
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