SpaceX, formally Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is a U.S. company that designs, builds and launches reusable rockets and runs Starlink, a broadband network of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit.[1] Since February 2, 2026, it has also owned xAI, the artificial intelligence developer founded by Elon Musk.[1][2] That acquisition brought the Grok family of large language models, the social platform X and the Colossus supercomputers in the Memphis area into SpaceX, which now reports them together as its AI segment.[1][3] The Space Wiki's SpaceX article covers the company's rockets, Starlink and Starship programs.

AI now absorbs most of SpaceX's capital spending: in the second quarter of 2026 the AI segment brought in $2.56 billion of revenue but accounted for $15.8 billion of the company's $18.4 billion in capital expenditures.[4] SpaceX also rents computing capacity to other AI developers, including Anthropic[3] and Google,[5] and is designing Starmind, a planned constellation of AI satellites whose first design is to carry NVIDIA processors.[6] The AI business, still called xAI in SEC filings,[1] was branded SpaceXAI in July 2026;[7] in October Musk said it would become SpaceXSI,[8] a name SpaceX's website and developer documentation were using by mid-month.[9][10]

Acquisition of xAI

On February 2, 2026, SpaceX completed its acquisition of X.AI Holdings Corp., the parent of X.AI Corp. and X Holdings Corp., through a share exchange that left xAI as a wholly owned subsidiary.[1] According to documents viewed by CNBC, the deal valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion and converted each xAI share into 0.1433 of a SpaceX share.[2] Musk's announcement argued that in the long term "space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale" and estimated that within two to three years space would be the lowest-cost place to generate AI compute.[11] The transaction is covered in the SpaceX-xAI merger article.

The AI unit

Name

SpaceX's offering documents define "xAI" as X.AI Holdings LLC (X.AI Holdings Corp. before the merger) together with its subsidiaries.[3] Musk said in May 2026 that xAI would no longer be a separate company, and on July 6 the xAI account on X posted "We are now @SpaceXAI."[7] The Grok 4.5 model card, dated July 14, calls SpaceXAI "a doing-business-as (dba) name of XAI LLC."[12]

On September 29, 2026, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14434, which tells executive departments and agencies to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in place of "Artificial Intelligence" and "AI" in official correspondence, public communications and other documents.[13] On October 4 Musk replied to a question on X about renaming the unit SpaceXSI: "Yes, we will make that change." Reuters reported that he gave no timeline.[8] By October 16 the navigation on spacex.com grouped Starmind, Grok, Grokipedia, X and Terafab under the heading "SpaceXSI," and the developer release notes called Grok 4.7 "SpaceXSI's frontier model."[9][10] In SpaceX's latest quarterly report, filed August 4, a month after the SpaceXAI rebrand, the business is still called xAI and the AI segment.[1]

Leadership

Musk is SpaceX's chief executive, chief technical officer and board chair, and until the acquisition he was also xAI's president, treasurer and chief executive.[3] Bloomberg reported that Musk put Michael Nicolls in charge of xAI in spring 2026 with the aim of catching up with Anthropic's Claude.[14] NVIDIA's August 2026 announcement identified him as president of SpaceXAI.[15]

Products

SpaceX said its July 2026 model, Grok 4.5, was trained alongside Cursor and "incorporates our 1.5 trillion-parameter V9 foundation model";[4] Grok 4.6 followed in August and Grok 4.7 in September.[10] The API also serves Grok Imagine image and video models and Grok Voice models.[10] Other products include Grok Build, a terminal-based coding agent,[12] and Grok Bot, launched on August 11, 2026, which its release notes describe as "durable AI teammates that work on a persistent cloud computer."[10] Grokipedia, an AI-generated encyclopedia that launched in October 2025 with 885,279 articles, sits beside Grok and X in SpaceX's site menu.[16][9] The offering documents counted about 550 million monthly active users across Grok and X at March 31, 2026, of whom about 117 million used Grok's AI features.[3]

An April 2026 option agreement gave SpaceX the right to buy Anysphere, the developer of Cursor, alongside a compute deal that included joint work on models such as Grok; SpaceX exercised the option in June.[1] The June 16 merger agreement set Cursor's implied equity value at $60.0 billion, and the deal closed on August 14, 2026, when Cursor's stock converted into the right to receive 389,289,254 SpaceX Class A shares, plus 1,752,426 shares for vested restricted stock units.[17][18] In October 2026 the unit introduced The X Subscription, one plan covering Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium, with a weekly usage allowance shared by Grok and Cursor.[19][20] A startup credits program, Grok for Startups (x.ai/startups), was publicized on X from October 22, 2026, under program terms dated October 7. It offers venture-backed startups with a live product promotional credits that can be spent from one balance on Grok, Grok Build, Grok Bot and the Grok API; the amount "depends on your funding, revenue, and current AI spend," according to the program FAQ.[37][38]

AI in SpaceX's financial reports

The 10-Q describes the AI segment as "a vertically integrated AI platform spanning a frontier LLM Grok, AI solutions for consumer and enterprise customers," the X platform and "AI computational infrastructure."[1] The segment's results therefore include X: advertising brought in $367 million of its second-quarter 2026 revenue, down from $426 million a year earlier.[4]

Period	AI revenue	AI loss from operations	AI capital expenditures
Full year 2025[3]	$3,201 million	$6,355 million	$12,727 million
First quarter 2026[4]	$818 million	$2,469 million	$7,723 million
Second quarter 2026[4]	$2,561 million	$1,257 million	$15,828 million

SpaceX attributed the 247 percent year-over-year rise in second-quarter AI revenue mainly to new Cloud Services Agreements worth $14.1 billion in contracted sales, plus higher Grok and X subscription revenue, and the segment reported positive AI adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 billion.[4] One AI-segment customer, unnamed in the 10-Q, accounted for 19.5 percent of SpaceX's consolidated revenue in that quarter.[1]

In the first half of 2026 SpaceX's purchases of property, plant and equipment reached $28.5 billion, more than double its $12.5 billion of revenue, and $23.6 billion of that spending was in the AI segment.[1][4] The 10-Q lists $27.96 billion of non-cancelable commitments, mainly for AI infrastructure, third-party cloud capacity and other services, with $22.24 billion due in 2027.[1] Some AI hardware is financed through equipment leases with Valor Equity Partners, whose founder Antonio Gracias sits on SpaceX's board; SpaceX recorded about $13.3 billion of debt related to those leases at June 30, 2026.[1]

Compute infrastructure

Colossus

The offering documents put the combined capacity of Colossus, on Paul R. Lowry Road in Memphis, and Colossus II, at sites in Memphis and Southaven, Mississippi, at about 1.0 gigawatt, and said the first cluster at each came online in 122 and 91 days respectively.[3] Nameplate capacity reached 1.4 GW at June 30, 2026, with Colossus II still being built out,[4] and Musk said on the August earnings call that he expected more than 2 GW by the end of 2026 and close to 10 GW by the end of 2027.[6]

Selling compute

The offering documents said Grok 5 was being trained at Colossus II while SpaceX provided "select compute capacity" to outside customers.[3]

Customer	Signed	Capacity	Price	Term
Anthropic	May 2026	About 325,000 NVIDIA GPUs at Colossus and Colossus II	$1.25 billion a month	To May 2029; either side may exit on 90 days' notice after three months[3]
Google	June 5, 2026	About 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs with CPUs and memory	$920 million a month	October 2026 to June 2029; either side may exit on 90 days' notice after December 31, 2026[5]
Reflection AI	June 2026	NVIDIA GB300 chips at Colossus II	$150 million a month	July 2026 to 2029; either side may exit on 90 days' notice after three months[6][21]

On the August earnings call, chief financial officer Bret Johnsen said SpaceX had contracted another $6.7 billion of cloud services revenue over six months starting in October, and argued that its AI compute spending was earning "less than a one-year payback."[6]

Chips and NVIDIA

NVIDIA invested in xAI's January 2026 funding round, and those shares became SpaceX stock in the merger.[6] On August 4, 2026, SpaceX said it would work with NVIDIA on the compute payload of the Starmind AI1 satellite, and Musk said on the earnings call that SpaceX would build its AI data centers exclusively with NVIDIA chips, calling Vera Rubin "the best AI computer."[6] NVIDIA said on August 24 that SpaceXAI would deploy its Vera CPUs for agentic AI workloads and expand the infrastructure behind Grok on the Vera Rubin platform.[15] SpaceX's Starmind page says its satellite design is "AI chip vendor agnostic," and for the longer term SpaceX plans to make its own chips at Terafab, a plant it is developing with Tesla.[22][23]

Orbital compute

On January 30, 2026, SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission to authorize up to one million satellites, flying between 500 and 2,000 km, as the "SpaceX Orbital Data Center system." The FCC's public notice of February 4 opened the application for comment and listed SpaceX's requests for waivers of the usual deployment milestones and surety bond rules. SpaceX told the agency that the satellites' optical links would pass traffic to Starlink's "high capacity (petabit) and high reliability laser mesh" for delivery to ground stations.[24] On August 28 the FCC's Space Bureau asked for more information, including on the backup radio links, whether Starlink could carry the constellation's optical traffic, and collision and reentry risk.[25] SpaceX replied on September 16 that each satellite would weigh less than 4,000 kg, that the probability of a collision with large debris was below 1 in 1,000 in each listed orbital shell, and that the satellites would make targeted reentries over the ocean; it asked the FCC to "swiftly authorize" the system.[26] The FCC had not acted on the application by October 16, 2026, when its status still read pending review.[27]

The constellation is called Starmind. In a June 2026 video, Musk presented a draft of the first version of SpaceX's AI satellite, which he called AI1.[28] SpaceX's program page says the satellites will fly in sun-synchronous orbit to collect continuous solar power, radiate their heat into space and beam results to Earth through Starlink's laser links, and that SpaceX is building a Gigasat Factory in Bastrop, Texas, to produce thousands of AI satellites "starting as soon as late 2027."[22] On August 24, 2026, Musk wrote that SpaceX and NVIDIA had designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system "for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with significant scale in 2028," meaning a first launch in the fourth quarter of 2027.[29] That target was earlier than the June offering documents, which said orbital AI compute satellites would start deploying "as early as 2028."[3]

SpaceX's EU prospectus warns that "AI compute satellites at scale need full Starship reusability to be economically compelling," and its risk factors list orbital AI compute among projects that "involve significant technical complexity, unproven technologies, or technologies that do not exist."[30][3] A Government Accountability Office technology spotlight in April 2026 said that large orbital data centers would need solar arrays larger than any yet launched and assembled in space, and named cooling, radiation, cost, servicing and debris as open problems.[31] The wider field is covered in space-based data centers.

The IPO and the AI pitch

SpaceX priced 555,555,555 shares at $135 each on June 11, 2026, raising $75 billion before the underwriters' option, and the shares began trading the next day.[32] With the option, it sold 638.9 million Class A shares for net proceeds of $85.7 billion.[1] The $135 price valued the company at $1.77 trillion, assuming the Cursor and EchoStar spectrum deals closed.[33]

In the offering documents, SpaceX said it owns and operates "what it believes to be the largest AI training data center clusters on Earth," argued that the key constraints on AI growth are physical (chip manufacturing, data center infrastructure and power generation), and described a goal of deploying 100 gigawatts of compute a year on satellites carrying more than 100 kilowatts of compute per metric ton.[3] In an interview SpaceX filed with the SEC, Johnsen called AI compute "the next really big one" and said that if the program stayed on target, orbital compute satellites would start flying in 2028, with "meaningful amounts of compute in space" in 2029.[28]

The offering documents said Musk would hold about 82.4 percent of the voting power after the IPO (82.3 percent if the underwriters bought their additional shares in full, which they did), making SpaceX a controlled company under Nasdaq listing rules.[3][1] His Schedule 13G, signed August 13, 2026, reported beneficial ownership of 6,418,547,515 Class A shares on an as-converted basis, 48.4 percent of that class, as of June 30.[34]

The first quarterly report after the listing, on August 4, showed revenue of $7.81 billion, above the $6.93 billion analysts expected, but the shares fell about 8 percent in after-hours trading; CNBC noted that capital spending of $18.37 billion exceeded the $13.22 billion average analyst estimate.[6]

Controversies and disclosed risks

Several Grok controversies predate the merger. In July 2025 the chatbot posted antisemitic content and called itself "MechaHitler" (Grok MechaHitler incident).[35] In January 2026 the European Commission opened a Digital Services Act investigation into whether X had properly assessed the risks of Grok's features, citing "manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material" (Grok child safety scandal).[36]

SpaceX's 10-Q says that since January 2026 the company and some subsidiaries have been sued over Grok's image-generation and editing features, in two putative class actions and a consumer-protection suit by the city of Baltimore that also names SpaceX. It also lists a May 2026 class action over tracking technologies on grok.com, and an April 2026 Clean Air Act suit by the NAACP alleging that mobile gas turbines powering Colossus II lack the proper permits; the United States moved to intervene and seek its dismissal.[1] The risk factors call the AI segment "recently formed, still being integrated," and warn that its compute infrastructure depends on the availability of "power, water, AI processors, and other critical components."[3]

Ties to Tesla

The offering documents describe Terafab as a chip manufacturing initiative with Tesla and Intel meant to "alleviate potential future chip shortages at SpaceX," and say SpaceX and Tesla are developing Macrohard, "an agentic AI platform designed to be capable of fully emulating digital workflows."[3] In August 2026 SpaceX said Terafab would be built in Grimes County, Texas, with a first phase costing about $16.8 billion from the two companies, and would make inference chips for Tesla Optimus robots and Cybercabs as well as high-power chips for SpaceX's space-based data centers.[23] Tesla's roughly $2 billion investment in xAI converted into SpaceX stock, and CNBC reported in June 2026 that Tesla owned 18.99 million SpaceX shares.[6][33]

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Editing: SpaceX