On 2 February 2026, SpaceX announced that it had acquired xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence company and the maker of the Grok models, in an all-stock deal. Both companies were already controlled by Musk, so the transaction combined two of his ventures rather than bringing an outside buyer to the table. SpaceX’s own update describes the result as bringing “AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform” under one company.
SpaceX framed the rationale around compute and power. As stated in its announcement, current advances in AI depend on large terrestrial data centers that require immense amounts of power and cooling, and the company argues that space-based AI is, in its words, the only way to scale in the long term. The merged company’s stated near-term ambition is to build solar-powered orbital data centers - server capacity placed in space, where it can draw on continuous sunlight and radiate heat to the surrounding vacuum - paired with the satellite constellation SpaceX already operates.
Reported valuations placed SpaceX at roughly one trillion dollars and xAI at roughly two hundred fifty billion, for a combined figure widely cited around 1.25 trillion dollars. Because both companies are private, these figures come from press reporting of the deal’s terms rather than from an audited public valuation; this library treats such numbers as party-stated and reported rather than independently established. SpaceX is privately held, so the acquisition did not produce the kind of public merger filing that a listed-company deal would.
The combination is corroborated by SpaceX’s later first-party materials. In a press release dated 4 June 2026 announcing its initial public offering, the company described itself as “the only company building the integrated hardware and software infrastructure of the future across space, connectivity, and AI” - the AI line reflecting xAI’s place inside the firm. The deal is notable as a frontier-AI lab being folded into a space and satellite company, tying the future of Grok to orbital infrastructure and placing a major AI effort inside one of the most valuable private companies in the world.