Elon Musk merges SpaceX and xAI in high-stakes bet on artificial intelligence

Elon Musk said on Monday that SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence group xAI, tying together two of his most ambitious ventures as he seeks to build increasingly powerful AI systems backed by vast computing infrastructure.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but the combined entities are valued at just over $1 trillion based on recent funding rounds.

SpaceX was most recently valued at about $800 billion in a secondary share sale, while xAI secured a valuation of roughly $230 billion earlier this year.

The deal marks another step in Musk’s attempt to integrate his sprawling business empire around a single technological thesis: that scale, data and compute will define the next era of artificial intelligence.

Announcing the transaction, Musk said the merger would help create “a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars,” language that underscores both the ambition and abstraction driving the strategy.

From social media to space-based computing

The SpaceX takeover follows xAI’s merger with Musk’s social media platform X last year, a transaction that valued the combined group at $113 billion and brought together a data-rich social network with a fast-growing AI lab.

Musk bought X, formerly Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022, and has since repositioned it as a core asset in his AI push, providing real-time data to train and refine models.

By folding xAI into SpaceX, Musk is now adding orbital launch capabilities and satellite infrastructure to that stack.

SpaceX’s Starlink constellation already provides global connectivity, and investors have long speculated that Musk could eventually deploy data centres or AI-related hardware in orbit to overcome terrestrial power and cooling constraints.

Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s chief financial officer, was scheduled to brief investors on the acquisition on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Racing rivals on scale and ambition

xAI has been raising capital aggressively as it competes with better-established players such as OpenAI, Meta and Google, all of which are pouring tens of billions of dollars into data centres, chips and energy supply.

Musk has argued that access to compute, rather than model design alone, will determine long-term winners in AI.

The SpaceX deal sharpens that bet, positioning Musk to control not just software and data, but also the physical infrastructure that powers AI systems.

For investors, the move reinforces a familiar pattern: Musk doubling down on vertical integration, even as it raises questions about execution risk, governance and how such a vast, interconnected empire will be managed.

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