Elon Musk's space company SpaceX has acquired the tech billionaire's AI company, xAI. This is according to a statement issued by SpaceX on Monday.
The purpose of bringing the two companies together is to create data centers in space. SpaceX writes in the statement that current advances in artificial intelligence depend on large ground-based data centers, which require enormous amounts of power and cooling.
- The global electricity consumption for artificial intelligence simply cannot be covered by ground-based solutions, even in the short term, without causing major damage to society and the environment, SpaceX writes in the statement.
The data centers are planned to run on solar energy.
- By directly utilizing almost constant solar energy with low operating and maintenance costs, these satellites will transform our ability to scale computers. It's always sunny in space, writes SpaceX.
According to the media outlet The Information, the acquisition of xAI will cost the aerospace company $250 billion. This corresponds to 1583 billion Danish kroner. xAI was valued at $230 billion in January, which corresponds to 1457 billion Danish kroner.
According to the merger agreement, xAI, which created the controversial chatbot Grok, will become a subsidiary of SpaceX with the merger, an unnamed person with knowledge of the matter said according to the news agency Reuters. The merged company will be valued at $1250 billion, according to the media outlet Bloomberg. That's equivalent to about 7900 billion kroner.
Musk merged xAI and X last year after he bought the then Twitter, which he later renamed X, in late 2022.
SpaceX is reportedly aiming for an IPO later this year that could value the company at 1.5 trillion dollars. This is what two unnamed people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Musk has previously opposed an IPO of the space company because he does not like the control that his electric car company Tesla has been subjected to after the company went public in 2021, writes AFP.
/ritzau/
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