The deal, which reportedly values SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, comes as the rocket company plans a blockbuster initial public offering this year that could take place as soon as June, Reuters has reported.
Analysts expect the potential landmark listing to reinvigorate the IPO market and push more high-profile private startups such as ChatGPT maker OpenAI and rival Anthropic to the public markets, ending a years-long downturn.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4546114-spacex-xai-merger-makes-analysts-ponder-benefits-challenges-and-teslas-future Musk intends to establish space-based data centers. “The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth,” said Musk in SpaceX’s press release on Monday. “My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.”
It can’t be said that Musk ain’t thinking big.
The analysts noted that Musk wants to own and control more of the AI ecosystem and “step by step the holy grail could be combining SpaceX and Tesla over the next 12 to 18 months in some form to give the connected tissue between both disruptive tech stalwarts looking to lead theAI Revolution.”
The Techie added that they see the merger of SpaceX and xAI as further confirmation that Elon Musk is building a vertically integrated innovation engine that uses space to address AI’s massive power and cooling needs.
It’s probably also confirmation that the entry fee for AI is much, much higher than xAI can raise on its own. Many tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions (as Meta intimated last week). Which is something that xAI can have access to if they’re bolted onto a big profitable company like SpaceX, but may have trouble raising on its own.
Yeah, I get that. If it’s so cheap to do, I wonder why they don’t just trash all the other data centers when something goes bad instead of staffing them and pulling servers out of racks and replacing them.
I mean, shooting a rocket off has to be more expensive than driving an 18 wheeler with some new components to a ground based center, doesn’t it?
Running a component in space is cheaper than running it on Earth. Free cooling. I mention this only to point out that there is more than just the cost of components to take into account.
BTW, I can imagine an Optimus Robot doing the repairs in space.
Well, it’s only free once you’ve paid for it. To use the vacuum of space to cool something, you need to get the components that can radiate that heat up into orbit. Which is a lot of mass, which equals a lot of expense.
A quick Google tour suggests that none of this is an economically viable alternative to ground-based data centers any time in the near future. The main benefit is 24/7 solar, but it appears that’s not anywhere near enough to justify the massive cost of just getting this stuff up into orbit.
Cooling is not free, the International Space Station uses a significant amount of power for cooling. The vacuum of space is an excellent insulator, so there are a variety of pumps, panels, pipes, and radiators to move a coolant fluid around to pull heat out of it and into the radiators to help dissipate the heat.
While space is cold, the vacuum is an insulator, making it difficult to shed heat, which requires powerful pumps to circulate fluids and move heat to large radiators. Google AI summary.
“Not free” doesn’t mean “economically infeasible”; I wouldn’t know and I would think the people who do these sorts of calculations would, but then they may be betting on “future technology” to make the numbers work, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.
Robots are poised to make what was once thought to be impossible in space a reality. In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) aims to extend the lifespan of satellites, to assembling massive life-seeking telescopes in space, to refueling and repairing spacecraft on journeys to distant locations, the possibilities are endless.