Jessica Mendoza

In a blog post announcing the merger, Musk explained his vision for his newly combined trillion-dollar mega-company.

Musk wrote that this new endeavor will, quote, extend the light of consciousness to the stars, enable the creation of colonies on Mars, and ensure, quote, humanity's multi-planetary future.

Musk also lays out what he says is the driving cause for combining SpaceX and XAI, data centers in space.

The idea is that AI data centers on Earth take up a lot of land and power.

It's a big drain.

But in space, neither of those issues are problems, at least theoretically.

The idea here is that solar will be what powers these data centers, which I suppose in space you have plenty of access to that.

This prospect is compelling enough that it's taken off across Silicon Valley.

And here's Musk talking about orbital data centers at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.

SpaceX, XAI, and Musk didn't respond to requests for comment.

According to Wall Street Journal reporting, SpaceX has been studying orbital data centers behind the scenes for a while, and it had a technical breakthrough last fall.

But there's something else XAI needs, and it's something you won't find in space.

Money.

Musk, being ultra rich and the owner of several major tech companies, has a few different chess pieces to play with here.

One way to fund his AI startup is to just invest more money in it.

Just a few days ago, Tesla, his electric vehicle company, did exactly that, investing $2 billion in XAI.

And Musk has also sometimes combined businesses.

Like last year, when X, formerly known as Twitter, combined with XAI.

This time, having SpaceX acquire XAI would give the AI startup a major financial boost because SpaceX has a lot of money.

SpaceX is also planning to go public this year, as early as this summer, according to Wall Street Journal reporting.