(Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

SpaceX merges with xAI, reportedly will seek an IPO valuation of $1.25 trillion

Elon Musk says his space company has merged with his AI company, with the lofty goal of eventually putting data centers in space.

Nate Becker

2/2/26 4:15PM

Elon Musk’s giant space company has merged with his AI company, according to a letter from Musk posted on the SpaceX website.

As part of the reasoning for the deal, Musk cited a pet idea among tech billionaires: powering AI by placing data centers in space.

“Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centers, which require immense amounts of power and cooling. Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment.

In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale...

By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will transform our ability to scale compute.”

(This concept, by the way, would be exceptionally hard to pull off.)

After the tie-up, the combined company is aiming to go public at a valuation of about $1.25 trillion, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the merger was happening, citing an internal memo.

Tesla, which Bloomberg had previously reported to have been in consideration to be merged among the companies in some way, wasn’t mentioned in the report of the deal. Shares were roughly flat after-hours.

The move would tie together two of Musk’s signature companies — two of the biggest privately held firms in the world. It would also bundle together rockets, satellites, the social media site X, and artificial intelligence all under one company.

An IPO at a valuation of $1.25 trillion would immediately place the combined SpaceX/xAI into the top 10 most valuable publicly traded companies on US exchanges. It would be one of the biggest global IPOs ever by valuation. (The largest IPO on record is Saudi Aramco, which went public in Saudi Arabia valued at about $1.9 trillion in 2019.)

Various reports had said SpaceX was seeking a valuation topping $1 trillion, and some had even floated a valuation exceeding $1.5 trillion.

Musk’s companies are already extremely interconnected, including Tesla’s recent $2 billion investment in xAI.

Rani Molla2h

Alphabet to tap international bond markets again as AI spending surges

Alphabet is tapping European debt markets again as its AI spending ramps up.

The Google parent is selling at least €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in bonds across six tranches, according to Bloomberg. The filing says that it’s for “general corporate purposes,” and the timing aligns with its plans to spend up to $190 billion this year on data centers and other AI infrastructure. In a separate filing released today, Alphabet also said it’s issuing Canadian dollar-denominated bonds, colloquially referred to as a “maple bonds,” but no values were available.

These are the latest in a broader funding push as the company increases its already high capex expectations. Earlier this year, Alphabet raised about $20 billion in a heavily oversubscribed US bond sale and also tapped sterling and Swiss franc markets as part of a roughly $32 billion deal.

Alphabet Returns to Euro Debt Market for Latest AI Megabond Deal

Rani Molla2h

Tesla told European regulators it expects “EU-wide” FSD approval in second or third quarter

Weeks after Dutch regulators became the first in the EU to approve Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system, internal emails viewed by Reuters show the concerns the company still faces across the bloc. That includes regulator questions about speeding, performance on icy roads, and whether calling a system that requires constant driver attention “Full Self-Driving” is misleading.

CEO Elon Musk has blamed Tesla’s weak European sales on the lack of FSD and is betting that wider approval could help turn things around.

That rollout may take longer than hoped: while Musk had pointed to earlier approval, a presentation in the correspondence reviewed by Reuters says Tesla now expects “EU-wide” clearance in the second or third quarter of 2026.

European vehicle regulators are meeting in Brussels today to discuss the matter, but the earliest possible vote would be in July.

Exclusive: Tesla faces EU skepticism over automated-driving tech, records show

CEO Elon Musk has blamed Tesla’s weak European sales on the lack of FSD and is betting that wider approval could help turn things around.

European vehicle regulators are meeting in Brussels today to discuss the matter, but the earliest possible vote would be in July.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman wanted a billion dollars — now his stake is worth $30 billion

A dispatch from the Musk v. Altman trial, as unflattering details from Brockman’s personal journal emerge.

Jon Keegan3h

Rani Molla5/1/26

Meta pushes deeper into AI robots with acquisition

Meta just bought robotics AI startup Assured Robot Intelligence, Bloomberg reports, doubling down on its push into humanoid tech. The team will join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs to build models that let robots “understand, predict and adapt to human behaviors in complex environments.”

The goal, Bloomberg says, is to be the Android of robots: building the software and hardware foundation others can use.

The move comes right after China forced Meta to let go of its acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg joins Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in racing into AI-powered robots.

Meta Acquires Robotics AI Company to Help Build Humanoid Technology

CEO Mark Zuckerberg joins Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in racing into AI-powered robots.

Rani Molla5/1/26

Apple’s capital spending is heading the opposite direction of Big Tech

The big story in Big Tech has been just how much they’re spending on capex to furnish their AI futures. Not only are Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft spending more than ever, they’re also spending more than they said they would just a quarter earlier. In total, their 2026 capital expenditure bill is now slated to surge beyond $700 billion.

Apple, by contrast, continues to take a different approach. The company has lagged peers in developing its own frontier AI models and has leaned more on partnerships. The strategy certainly doesn’t seem to be hurting Apple yet. The company posted record revenue in the March quarter that beat analysts’ expectations this week, even without a robust AI offering.

Apple’s capex actually fell in the March quarter. Its payments for acquisition of property, plant, and equipment totaled about $1.9 billion in its fiscal second quarter, down 36% from roughly $3 billion a year earlier. So on a year-over-year basis, Apple’s capex declined while everyone else’s jumped sharply.