Elon Musk told employees at xAI, his artificial intelligence (AI) company, that the company needs a satellite factory on the moon to launch them into space.
Inspired by the billionaire’s love of sci-fi, the space catapult would be called a mass driver, and would become a part of an imagined lunar facility that made satellites to offer the computing power for the company’s AI.
According to The New York Times, Musk stated during a meeting on Tuesday, “You have to go to the moon,” a significant move that would assist xAI to achieve more power as compared to its competitors.
“It’s difficult to imagine what an intelligence of that scale would think about, but it’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen,” the tech billionaire added.
Last week, the Tesla owner announced the merger of xAI with his rocket business, SpaceX, aiming to create space-based AI data centres.
Now the vision has diversified to include the lunar facility, though he did not say in his hourlong talk that also featured remarks from other executives, how it could be built.
Two major business empires of Musk are merging as SpaceX prepares an initial public offering, which could come as early as June.
Musk’s fixation with the moon is a recent one. Since founding SpaceX in 2002, he has always aimed to make humanity multiplanetary, initially by colonising Marks.
Recently, he has shared on X regarding his new focus “Moon.”
On Tuesday, Musk described the moon as a steppingstone to Mars. Initially, he stated that the company would build “a self-sustaining city on the moon”, then travel to Mars and finally explore star systems in search of aliens.
