Elon Musk’s SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence company xAI in the biggest merger of the AI and space ventures.
According to The Guardian, the aerospace company bought the Grok parent company in a record-breaking $1.25 trillion (£910bn) merger announced on Monday, February 2.
SpaceX stated on its website that 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.”
The space company, which is also one of the most valuable private companies in the world, will now gain all the xAI properties, including the chatbot and social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that Musk bought in 2022 for $44bn (£38bn).
As per reports, SpaceX was valued at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion in the deal, setting the stage for a potential over $1 trillion stock market listing.
The announcement also shared the world’s richest person, Musk’s, plans behind the merger.
It said, “Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centres, which require immense amounts of power and cooling. Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment. In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale.”
It is worth noting that Musk has been merging his businesses in the recent months, making them more interconnected with deals and acquisitions.
Recently, xAI acquired X stocks in another deal Tesla invested $2 billion in xAI. These moves are parts of Mus’s plan to make a powerful entity and space-based AI data centres.
