[tmountain]

A huge chunk of SoaceX value in their filing is attributed to their AI technology (aka Grok). I believe it’s 90% or more… Now, it seems they’re leasing the infrastructure required for Grok to scale to Anthropic and Google. I wonder how that math works…

[embedding-shape]

But what is xAI? I thought that was the company that had the compute + Grok, the AI company? Since when does SpaceX (which I thought was a space company?) own AI-compute hardware and/or can do model hosting? Are all of Musks companies just one big thing now where the names no longer matter, or how is it supposed to work?

Edit: seems I'm just a bit behind: "xAI — now part of SpaceX ", seems really strange for a space company to buy an AI company, but I guess rather that, than the other way around.

[uxhacker]

I think some justify it as SpaceX plans to offer hosting in space, and then use Starlink to distribute it.

[BLKNSLVR]

That's what the IPO salesman and pamphlet said anyway.

[mmcwilliams]

Can you provide a good example of something that is currently hosted in space and distributed via satellite?

[elcritch]

GPS..

[mmcwilliams]

You believe that GPS is hosted on servers in space?

[elcritch]

Technically, yes. Obviously stretches the normal definition of a server, but it is a computer controlled system "serving" a mostly digital signal.

https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/article/gps-iii-satellite-l...

[robmccoll]

Musk sold Twitter into xAI which he then sold into SpaceX as a financial engineering effort to lessen the impact of massive debts and cash burn. The IPO and some clever structuring is the final step in the process.

[ProAm]

It's really just a debt transfer to make one company look good while the other is saddled with debt. Should be illegal

[bmitc]

I.e., fraud.

[tmountain]

Context here (Patrick Boyle):

https://youtu.be/IHD8BDFYyGI?is=dnpBeOoxH7LUJknm

[thisisit]

Next up Tesla and SpaceX are going to merge and that will another round of synergies where Tesla and Vision AI (in FSD) and xAI.

[peterspath]

Not really strange... if the goal is to go to mars, you probably need robots, those need intelligence -> ai. It fits pretty well, especially because you want to own all the core technologies as a company.

[thefounder]

Wow…sounds like some kindergarten stuff

[embedding-shape]

Why 4-5 companies instead of one then? I thought the goal of SpaceX was to get to Mars, why does xAI need to have that same goal? Or he didn't think xAI was suitable for that goal, then changed his mind so merged the companies?

[stuxnet79]

You are overthinking this. The whole purpose of the SpaceX / xAI merger is for Musk to launder his failing companies to make them more palatable to the public. Not unlike the complex Mortgage Backed Securities of the GFC era which had a ton of low quality debt but yet were somehow assigned spotless credit ratings. Twitter is also being rolled up into SpaceX for the same reason.

[trollbridge]

I sure wish my company were failing the same way Musk’s allegedly are.

[jazzyjackson]

Personally I can go without owing money to Saudi royals.

[olyjohn]

Yeah, there are too many people happy to sacrifice principles for a buck...

[jerojero]

The stated goal is to "go to mars", the real goal is to make money.

He sold his failing but hype business to his soon-to-IPO successful but kinda boring business.

It's a way of laundering the debt and dumping into investors as he pitted different indexes against each other to force his way into one of them, and have people's 401k buy into them. Its a ton of money.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla is bought into spaceX in the future.

[cityzen]

He’s a drug addict and sociopath. Also has very thin skin (and hair) so he does stupid shit. Somehow we are all left holding the bag on his BS.

[BLKNSLVR]

And Africa is left holding a larger bag of Ebola.

[Rover222]

It has nothing to do with Grok, at least not the current iteration. SpaceX is the only company that can concievably launch large scale orbital compute.

[jazzyjackson]

I’m out of the loop, why is compute better /after/ being launched into space? Is the idea just to be co-located within the ISP to reduce round trip time to the LLMs?

[laughing_man]

There would be some benefits, assuming you could do it for a reasonable cost. For one, you have effectively uninterruptible power using solar panels in space. And it's free, too, once you have the hardware in place.

And you don't have to deal with any of the site selection stuff you have for terrestrial data centers. No NIMBYs. No politicians trying to extort bribes. No water problems.

In space there are no earthquakes, tornadoes, or floods.

I'm still skeptical. It's hard to believe it costs so much to build a data center on the ground that putting it into orbit is an economically viable alternative.

[delecti]

Yeah, launch costs alone make it infeasible, and power being "free" exacerbates the cost (gotta get all those panels up there). Cooling is also dramatically harder, plus shielding, and it makes repair/upgrade basically impossible.

I'm not going to assert that large scale space compute will never happen, but I feel confident saying it won't happen this decade or next.

[laughing_man]

When they get the kinks out of Starship, launch costs will be dramatically lower than we're used to thinking. They'll probably be using it to launch Starlink sats in earnest next year, so I don't think that would be the long leg.

I used to think heat would be a problem, too, but I've come around. It's a consideration, but it's doable. Remember we already have some pretty high power sats up there, so it's not something we haven't already been working around.

IMO the big cash drain will end up being maintenance, as in, you can't do it. If you have a box or a power supply fail on the ground you can swap it out. Anything in orbit would have to be replaced.

[frm88]

Things to think about: the russian satellites currently already in orbit and being tested to jam global GPS signals: https://youtu.be/tz23G_UXCGA?si=Jkg7hYnwER39-FXf (Veritasium). In all these sci-fi space datacentre scenarios, has anybody considered that astrolaw is in no way currently equipped to deal with datacenters in space? Neither are international relations.

[JumpCrisscross]

> launch costs alone make it infeasible

Last time I did the math, launch costs were well balanced against permitting delays (mediated by interest rates). The break even rests almost entirely on radiator mass efficiency (which is, admittedly, a function of launch costs).

Like, if everyone’s terrestrial datacenter projects start getting blocked, and demand for AI continues, the price a rational buyer would pay for in-orbit compute could get ridiculous enough to break even on current kit. And current kit in launch vehicles, radiators and solar panels is advancing.

I don’t think the thesis is met yet. But it’s less ridiculous than I thought it was before I sat down with pen and paper.

[histriosum]

Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper simply to focus building your data centers in other poorer countries where your permits won’t be blocked? Why would the next most logical choice be “let’s put it in orbit”?

[BLKNSLVR]

Grokipedia would be way better launched into space.

[speedgoose]

The risk is getting our planet annihilated if something stumbles upon it.