Deal comes as Musk pursues plans for datacenters and solar-powered satellites in space to propel AI
Elon Musk’s aerospace firm SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI, in a merger that consolidates part of Musk’s empire as SpaceX prepares to go public later this year, at a valuation likely to exceed $1tn.
The two companies announced the deal on Monday in a statement on SpaceX’s website, saying the merger would form “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform”.
SpaceX, one of the world’s most valuable private companies, will gain xAI properties such as its Grok chatbot and the social media platform X. The acquisition comes as Musk has pursued plans to put datacenters and solar-powered satellites in space as a means of powering artificial intelligence, an immense and exorbitantly expensive undertaking.
The announcement of the deal specifically cited Musk’s plans for space-based datacenters as a rationale for the deal.
