Elon Musk said he plans to merge his rocket company, SpaceX, with his new artificial intelligence startup to send AI data centers to space. Combining the businesses would create a $1.25 trillion company but some shareholders have expressed worries that the technological premise behind the idea will not succeed.
The key outcome of this deal for Musk is to move data centers, the central nervous system of AI tools, into space. AI companies are reliant on large amounts of water and electricity that Musk argues could be solved by placing as many as a million satellites into orbit. The satellites would form a vast system of solar-powered data centers.
Professors Julie McCann and Matthew Santer, the co-directors of the School of Convergence Science at Imperial College London, say data centers that are solar-powered could be a potential future option for AI companies. There are limits to how much power satellites can produce; it would need to be a planet-wide distributed computer made of several satellites.
McCann and Santer also talked about the compilation of the plan involving repairs and maintenance.
“Datacentres on earth are constantly maintained – component failure is normal. Shipping components to space is complex and expensive, and you would have to be innovative regarding how components are fitted.”
Another reason for the conjunction of the companies is that SpaceX will give xAI better access to investors, according to an investor in both Tesla and SpaceX, Ross Gerber. Reportedly, xAI spent over $13 billion last year, and unlike companies such as Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, which all use AI, it does not have a legacy business generating cash to fund its efforts.
“For me as a Twitter shareholder, I could not be happier. I pretty much figured I had lost my money but that has now been parlayed into owning SpaceX shares,” Gerber said. “This is the time to create a multitrillion-dollar company. I know Elon. It’s going to happen.”
Author: Andrew Streeter
Photo courtesy of Evan Vucci, AP News
Editor: Hannah Clove
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