SpaceX and xAI Merger Fuels Space-Based AI IPO Talk (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I'm Ben Thompson. Now we're going to start with the world's richest man and the biggest merger of all time. Elon Musk has announced that his rocket company SpaceX is taking over his artificial intelligence X AI firm in a deal worth one and a quarter trillion dollars. Now that paves the way for the combined business to float on the stock market this summer in a blockbuster initial public offering that could make Mr Musk a trillionaire. It raises the prospect of AI data centres in space. Well we've been speaking to the investment advisor Colleen McHugh who says there will be huge investor interest in the flotation of the new company but also a lot of scrutiny over its finances.

[00:00:40] Speaker 2: There's been a lot of talk or there was a lot of talk at the in the market certainly last year you know when SpaceX going to to list because remember we have this situation in private markets now where companies stay private for so long and there's not an opportunity for people to invest in these entities until the IPO. There's going to be a massive amount of interest in this company because it's not just a rocket company story anymore. It's been pitched as space plus AI plus communications all under one umbrella and that's going to be exciting. But definitely some tough questions you know X AIs is burning cash and and I do wonder if investors you know they might push back a little bit in terms of you know using it to fund you know having SpaceX fund X AIs activity. So definitely want to watch a lot of scrutiny I think.

[00:01:36] Speaker 1: So that's the money. What about the tech? Are AI data centres in space maybe a practical option anytime soon? Let's talk to the tech writer and lecturer Chris Stogall Walker. Chris good to have you here. What do you make of this deal? What do you think this allows the firm to do that they can't currently do?

[00:01:50] Speaker 3: Well one of the big things is that they want to put these huge data centres that power the AI revolution into space and that is vital for Elon Musk and his companies because we are running out of practical ways of doing so on earth at the scale that we imagined. So if we wind back just last week when Tesla announced their latest quarterly results Elon Musk said that they were going to be closing and repurposing a couple of their factories because they didn't like the way that they were working for the old models of cars instead putting in their place humanoid robots these optimist bots that are important. Now if those go to plan they will be using up an awful lot of data and churning through it and Elon Musk is finding it very difficult to find places to put these data centres on earth so this is his grand vision.

[00:02:38] Speaker 1: How likely is it that that will happen and what sort of time frame are we looking at here?

[00:02:42] Speaker 3: Well Elon Musk says that he's going to be doing it in the next few years but then Elon Musk says an awful lot of things that he's going to be doing in the next few years and actually that can sometimes turn into five or ten years but what is I think perhaps potentially most interesting here is that Elon Musk has the ability to do so better than most others because if you look at this obviously you have therefore SpaceX which is cornering effectively the market in rocket launchers it will be able to put these bits of equipment this hardware into orbit in a way that is much easier than any other company would have so that I think explains a little bit of the cross-pollination here.

[00:03:20] Speaker 1: He may have first or early mover advantage to do this but this raises a lot of questions doesn't it about who owns that real estate in space?

[00:03:28] Speaker 3: Yeah an awful lot if you look at the filings that Musk has been putting together as part of the merger of this company he says that he wants to be putting vast numbers of satellites into space and it's already pretty crowded place to be honest so if you start to add data centers and things onto that it becomes incredibly difficult and yes we run the risk I suppose of some sort of monopolistic type of control here of some of the key infrastructure that will be if you believe Musk powering our future so something that people might want to look into.

[00:03:59] Speaker 1: Chris really good to talk to you thanks so much Chris Stoker-Walker there the tech writer and lecturer appreciate your time thanks.