In a move to consolidate his ventures, Elon Musk's SpaceX has acquired xAI, his artificial intelligence company, for $250 billion. The deal, announced Monday, February 3, 2026, merges Musk's two largest private businesses into a massive conglomerate alongside Tesla.
SpaceX, known for its government and private space launches and Starlink satellite internet service, will now encompass xAI's properties, including the Grok chatbot and the social media platform X. Musk said the combined company represents “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth,” in a statement posted on SpaceX’s website.
According to investor Ross Gerber, a shareholder in xAI who received merger documents, the deal values SpaceX at $1 trillion. The merger follows Musk's recent moves to consolidate his sprawling empire. Last year, xAI acquired X, which originated from Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022, in an all-stock deal valuing the AI venture at $80 billion and the social platform at $33 billion.
Musk has plans to put data centers and solar-powered satellites in space to power artificial intelligence, which is an immense and expensive undertaking. Musk believes that "global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions" and that moving resource-intensive operations to space is "the only logical solution". SpaceX recently filed an application with the FCC to create an "orbital data center" by launching a million new satellites. Musk also claimed that space-based data centers will enable advancements in space travel. He stated that making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars, and ultimately expansion to the Universe.
SpaceX is expected to announce an initial public offering (IPO) in the coming months. Overseeing xAI would allow the company to promote itself as a contender in the AI race, potentially tapping into investor interest. Bloomberg notes that SpaceX has also discussed a possible merger with Tesla.