Comment by paxys
8 hours ago
Just a neat bit of financial engineering. You can tell because Elon picked SpaceX instead of Tesla – which would have actually made sense at some level (Optimus Robots + AI). But Tesla is public and so he'd need to follow laws and reporting requirements.
You can tell it's just financial engineering because in the entire press release xAI is only mentioned in the first two sentences. Everything after that is Elon talking about space data centers to distract from the actual topic. Which seems to be working
This is fairly naive, Elon isn't the only investor in SpaceX.
My guess is "that they did the math" and had an engineering study which convinced them that getting AI datacenters into space will make sense.
It's also not hard to imagine why, the process alone once perfected could be reused for asteroid mining for example, then mirogravity manufacturing, either of which alone would be enormous capital intensive projects. Even if AI dataenters in space are break-even it would be a massive win for SpaceX and leave their competition far behind.
Are you a bot or are you just stupid?
There are several other companies that have announced efforts to try data centers in space.
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does he need spacex/xai to prop up tesla or the other way around?
Tesla is still very profitable, as is SpaceX I assume. Twitter/X has been a $44 billion dollar failure, and xAI is a vanity project so Musk can go around saying he is a player in the AI space. Investors in both X and xAI need to be bailed out, hence this announcement.
Tesla has a P/E in the hundreds and a ~0.3% market cap to profit ratio. In what world is this "very" profitable?
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The $44B Twitter/X buyout was not a failure. For example Fidelity has its $19M investment in the buyout - now xAI common shares - marked at $62M (up over 3X) as of 12/31/25. It was certainly valued even higher on 1/31/26 after xAI had an oversubcribed fund raise in January. All before this merger announcement.
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I think its an effort to position SpaceX as an AI company in order to justify some ridiculous valuation at IPO.
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Do you genuinely not think that "Elon" (xAI) is player in the AI space?
You don't have to think they have the best models of course, but they are clearly a very significant, and some might argue, leading player in the AI race.
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I suspect SpaceX will acquire Tesla at some point. It’s the most profitable of these companies. So basically SpaceX employees and shareholders are covering up for the failing Tesla business and the already-failed xAI business.
Let’s not forget, xAI is the parent of Twitter/X (the social network). So now, taxpayers are paying to keep Twitter/X alive. After all, it is taxpayer money going to the contracts the government gives SpaceX for launches. Nice way to subsidize what is effectively a one sided campaign machine for the GOP and far right.
> I suspect SpaceX will acquire Tesla at some point.
I think that is also likely, unless Tesla can stage a major turnaround, it is going to be beaten by Chinese competitors nearly everywhere that they are allowed (which is everywhere but the USA.)
This was my immediate thought as well. A great time to ask yourself — why am I literally paying for any of this? At best I literally don't use any of these services, at worst they are actively used against me.
I get what you're saying, but that taxpayer money is paying for the launch services at a very competitive rate (possibly the cheapest of all available options), not a subsidy scheme.
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I guess the difference is Tesla is a public company, so requires more paperwork. SpaceX isn't public yet, but will be soon, meaning it will have a cash infusion.