Dig deeper into Musk’s big picture goals, and the merger starts to make a lot more sense — even if there’s a decidedly sci-fi twist.

SpaceX's Starship rocket, due to launch in 2026 from Florida, is key to deploying satellites for orbital data centers needed for Musk's AI goals.

Musk’s merger of SpaceX and xAI turns a future IPO into a bet on space-based data centers and a $1.25 trillion vision for AI compute beyond the planet. Elon Musk is merging his rocket maker SpaceX with his artificial intelligence startup xAI in a deal that changes what a future SpaceX IPO represents.

Musk wrote that the merger of SpaceX and xAI will ‘form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth.’

Starship, the world's largest rocket that launches in Texas, could play a vital role in SpaceX founder Elon Musk's vision of orbital data centers.

The list of broken promises Musk has made about fantastical technological achievements leaves a lot of room for doubt.

Elon Musk is creating a new narrative around SpaceX.As the rocket company prepares to go public, Musk is clearly applying the lessons he has learned at Tesla. There he long leaned into whatever IT thing was capturing Wall Street’s attention at the time.

Elon Musk is combining SpaceX and xAI in a deal that values the enlarged entity at $1.25 trillion, as the world’s richest man looks to fuel his increasingly costly ambitions in artificial intelligence and space exploration.