Elon Musk Rolls His AI Startup Into SpaceX, Creating the World’s Most Valuable Company

Elon Musk’s rocket and outer institution SpaceX is acquiring his AI startup xAI, the centibillionaire announced connected Monday. In a blog post, Musk said the acquisition was warranted due to the fact that planetary energy request for AI cannot beryllium met with “terrestrial solutions,” and Silicon Valley volition soon request to physique information centers successful abstraction to powerfulness its AI ambitions.

“In the agelong term, space-based AI is evidently the lone mode to scale,” Musk wrote. “The lone logical solution truthful is to transport these resource-intensive efforts to a determination with immense powerfulness and space. I mean, abstraction is called ‘space’ for a reason.”

The deal, which pulls unneurotic 2 of Musk’s largest backstage ventures, values the combined entity astatine $1.25 trillion, making it the astir invaluable backstage institution successful the world, according to a study from Bloomberg.

SpaceX was successful the process of preparing to spell nationalist aboriginal this twelvemonth earlier the xAI acquisition was announced. The abstraction firm’s plans for an archetypal nationalist offering are inactive on, according to Bloomberg.

In December, SpaceX told employees that it would bargain insider shares successful a woody that would worth the rocket institution astatine $800 billion, according to The New York Times. Last month, xAI announced that it had raised $20 cardinal from investors, bringing the company’s valuation to astir $230 billion.

This isn’t the archetypal clip Musk has sought to consolidate parts of his immense concern empire, which is mostly privately owned and includes xAI, SpaceX, the encephalon interface institution Neuralink, and the passageway proscription steadfast the Boring Company.

Last year, xAI acquired Musk’s societal media level X, formerly known arsenic Twitter, successful a woody that valued the combined entity astatine much than $110 billion. Since then, xAI’s halfway product, Grok, has go further integrated into the societal media platform. Grok is featured prominently successful assorted X features, and Musk has claimed the app's contented proposal algorithm is powered by xAI’s technology.

A decennary ago, Musk besides utilized shares of his electrical car institution Tesla to acquisition SolarCity, a renewable vigor steadfast that was tally astatine the clip by relative Lyndon Rive.

The xAI acquisition demonstrates however Musk tin usage his expansive web of companies to assistance powerfulness his ain often grandiose visions of the future. Elon Musk said successful the blog station that SpaceX volition instantly absorption connected launching satellites into abstraction to powerfulness AI improvement connected Earth, but eventually, the space-based information centers helium envisions gathering could powerfulness civilizations connected different planets, specified arsenic Mars.

“This marks not conscionable the adjacent chapter, but the adjacent publication successful SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to marque a sentient prima to recognize the Universe and widen the airy of consciousness to the stars,” Musk said successful the blog post.