Elon Musk’s SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence (AI) company xAI, creating a company worth more than $1-trillion – the most valuable company in the world.
“SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based Internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,” the announcement from SpaceX reads.
“This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
It adds that current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centres, which require immense amounts of power and cooling. “Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment.
“In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. To harness even a millionth of our Sun’s energy would require over a million times more energy than our civilization currently uses. The only logical solution therefore is to transport these resource-intensive efforts to a location with vast power and space.
“By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will transform our ability to scale compute,” the statement continues.
“It’s always sunny in space. Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centres is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization, one that can harness the Sun’s full power, while supporting AI-driven applications for billions of people today and ensuring humanity’s multi-planetary future.”