Jessica Mendoza

At that point, the idea of combining SpaceX and XAI became a priority for people in Musk's inner circle.

Soon, SpaceX executives were selling the company's new focus on AI satellites to banks and investors, people familiar with the discussion said.

On January 31st, SpaceX and XAI signed a merger agreement that created a $1.25 trillion company.

The deal closed two days later.

Now, with SpaceX reportedly set to debut on the stock market in the coming months, executives at the mega company and Elon Musk have to sell their vision to the public.

Is this risky for the valuation of SpaceX?

Will it change anything about its plan to go public, if at all?

It's not unusual for a more established, profitable company to buy a small startup with a lot of potential but not a lot of revenue.

But Berber says this acquisition is different, in part because Musk owns both companies, so investors might see it as a conflicted transaction.

Also, the synergies Musk is promising, specifically these data centers in space, are an unproven technology.

The mega merger shows how committed Musk is to his grand ambitions for a multi-planetary human species.

But it also makes clear that his focus on AI is paramount.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting.

It's almost like we're once again asking the question, is Elon Musk reckless or is he a brilliant genius, you know, playing 4D chess while the rest of us are in 3D?

That's all for today, Friday, February 6th.

Additional reporting in this episode by Megan Bobrowski, Corey Dreebush, Micah Maidenberg, Becky Peterson, and Alexander Saidi.

The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.

The show is made by Catherine Brewer, Victoria Dominguez, Pia Gadkari, Isabella Japal, Sophie Cotner, Ryan Knudsen, Matt Kwong, Colin McNulty, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt,

Alan Rodriguez-Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pierre Singhi, Jivika Verma, Lisa Wang, Katherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamise, and me, Jessica Mendoza.

Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard.