Elon Musk has initiated the process of internally unifying his businesses and brands. In a fresh developer, Musk’s space company SpaceX has confirmed the acquisition of the billionaire’s AI company, xAI.
Announcing the development, Musk posted a blog on the SpaceX website on Monday. It said it will use xAI’s offerings to equip rockets with AI and work on space-based internet system among other advance space technologies.
“This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars,” Musk said.
Space-based AI is the way to scale the technologies in the future as it would eliminate the need for terrestrial data centres, electricity supply, and cooling mechanisms, the billionaire believes.
Sharing his estimate, Musk said within the next three years space will emerge as the most cost-effective way to generate AI computation. The low cost of advancing the technology through space, he said, will attract AI firms to adopt and scale development.
In 2025, 3,000 tons of payload was launched into orbit mainly consisting of Starlink satellites. This year, Musk plans to send powerful V3 Starlink satellites to orbit alongside the next generation of direct-to-mobile satellites, which he claims will deliver full cellular coverage everywhere on Earth.
“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,” he said.
Musk, in his rather ambitious vision, sees humans establish permanent presence for scientific and manufacturing pursuits in space — particularly, on the moon and on Mars.
“By using an electromagnetic mass driver and lunar manufacturing, it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power,” he wrote in his announcement.