You're right. Because it is. Twitter was hemmorhaging money . It made a little bit of sense too with the Grok integration. This helps when you can then just fold an unprofitable branch in an...
You're right. Because it is. Twitter was hemmorhaging money and buying it with xAI took Twitter private instead of public. It made a little bit of sense too with the Grok integration. This helps when you can then just fold an unprofitable branch in an otherwise profitable company without having to publicly report on the profitability. Now, without any clear connection between xAI and SpaceX the move just makes me wonder if xAI isn't profitable either, and to be clear most AI companies aren't, so folding it into SpaceX makes it part of a profitable whole.
Instead of letting your companies go bankrupt, you fold it into others. Like a shell game.
I'm going to wager that space-datacenters is just a cloud cover hiding the collapse.
Edit: Some clarification.
Edit2: Twitter became private when Elon bought it, not when xAI bought it.
Wasn't X already private? My understanding was that having xAI acquire X was to give it access to the investment money xAI was getting. It's not like there was much demand from private investors...
Twitter was hemmorhaging money and buying it with xAI took Twitter private instead of public.
Wasn't X already private? My understanding was that having xAI acquire X was to give it access to the investment money xAI was getting. It's not like there was much demand from private investors to invest in X, and they didn't have other significant revenue coming in, so that was the easiest way for Musk to keep it going.
Twitter itself was public. But you're correct that X was already private by the time he incorporated it into xAI. Musk made X private almost immediately upon buying Twitter through a full share...
Twitter itself was public. But you're correct that X was already private by the time he incorporated it into xAI. Musk made X private almost immediately upon buying Twitter through a full share acquisition. Good catch. My mistake!
This is interesting in the sense that SpaceX is the one of Musk's businesses that has been most successful at insulating itself from Musk, whereas Twitter and xAI have been pretty much personal...
This is interesting in the sense that SpaceX is the one of Musk's businesses that has been most successful at insulating itself from Musk, whereas Twitter and xAI have been pretty much personal fiefdoms.
Yeah, feels like a bailout to rescue his shitty AI with one of the only businesses' that is actually doing good work. I hope it doesn't drag down SpaceX too much.
Yeah, feels like a bailout to rescue his shitty AI with one of the only businesses' that is actually doing good work. I hope it doesn't drag down SpaceX too much.
Oof, space-based data-centers won’t just be competing with normal data-centers. If a small offline server can securely and effectively achieve the same results albeit somewhat slower, you’ll have...
Oof, space-based data-centers won’t just be competing with normal data-centers. If a small offline server can securely and effectively achieve the same results albeit somewhat slower, you’ll have to convince people getting work done in seconds rather than minutes or even hours is worth the upload to the space-cloud and extra cost.
I think xAI in space will fail for the same reasons people don’t mind flying for 8 hours across the Atlantic even though we have the technology to make the journey in 4. All in all, do enough people need the speed to be productive?
True, but that’s what this acquisition is signaling to the world. SpaceX is bullish on servers in space. To me it looks like a big uninformed gamble, but I guess shareholders are convinced it’s...
True, but that’s what this acquisition is signaling to the world. SpaceX is bullish on servers in space. To me it looks like a big uninformed gamble, but I guess shareholders are convinced it’s the future.
On the flip-side, it’s a good starting point for a space-based civilization.
It could be something I guess, but the entire idea of space based data centers seems incredibly flawed. Data centers produce extreme amounts of heat. Getting rid of heat is a massive problem in...
It could be something I guess, but the entire idea of space based data centers seems incredibly flawed.
Data centers produce extreme amounts of heat. Getting rid of heat is a massive problem in space. You can only radiate it away so fast. And that's before getting into shielding from cosmic rays and repairability. RAM is expensive enough before you have to put it on a rocket to get it to your server farm for replacement.
The entire idea seems like something that 'sounds sci-fi' so it makes for good sound bites of "maybe we could do this" to suggest alternatives to LLMs taking up power and water on Earth.
From the article: [...] A reason this might not be nuts is that SpaceX has launched more satellites than any other company. Their Starlink satellites do work, so maybe they can figure out power,...
From the article:
The merger could be seen as an indication of the cash xAI needs to compete in the fast-growing field of AI, as well as the technology’s importance in future of space exploration.
[...]
“Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centers, which require immense amounts of power and cooling,” Musk wrote in a post on SpaceX’s website. “The only logical solution therefore is to transport these resource-intensive efforts to a location with vast power and space.”
Musk said he estimates that the “lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space” within two to three years.
SpaceX sought permission on Friday from the Federal Communication Commission to launch a constellation of 1 million satellites into orbit. The filing said the aim is to provide a network of solar-powered data centers to “accommodate the explosive growth of data demands driven by AI.”
A reason this might not be nuts is that SpaceX has launched more satellites than any other company. Their Starlink satellites do work, so maybe they can figure out power, cooling, and logistics for GPU's?
There is no logical way this would cost less than literally anywhere else, even if you could just snap you fingers and solve the power/cooling problems tomorrow. This is another "and that's why i...
so maybe they can figure out power, cooling, and logistics for GPU's?
There is no logical way this would cost less than literally anywhere else, even if you could just snap you fingers and solve the power/cooling problems tomorrow.
This is another "and that's why i need congress to fund me and bend laws" grift. I NEED all this funding to put processors in space that could go on any empty swath of land or even underwater easier.
I can think of one way, though it's rather dubious: if NIMBY opposition to new data centers goes up enough that they can't build them on Earth for a reasonable amount of money.
I can think of one way, though it's rather dubious: if NIMBY opposition to new data centers goes up enough that they can't build them on Earth for a reasonable amount of money.
You could literally build them cheaper in the Shara, the ocean, or the arctic. Let alone the thousands of square miles in various other countries who would gladly take investment for land. It...
You could literally build them cheaper in the Shara, the ocean, or the arctic. Let alone the thousands of square miles in various other countries who would gladly take investment for land. It would take a literally catastrophic level of NIMBY. That's before you even look at the US.
The level of money required for this is going to be just astronomically stupid and it's trying to entwine his AI/Datacenter needs with his lift capacity company.
Yeah I find it quite hard to believe running this type of operation in space to be viable. The impression I get more is that Elon wants to monopolize space, like the space in Earth's orbit, and...
Yeah I find it quite hard to believe running this type of operation in space to be viable. The impression I get more is that Elon wants to monopolize space, like the space in Earth's orbit, and this is a justification for that. Yes I know the Earth is huge and there's a lot of orbital space around Earth, but because of the nature of wireless signals and managing wireless signals, managing objects in space and managing launches to get into space and so on, the more stuff there is in space, the harder it will be for other people to launch more stuff into space. The early entrants into utilizing space in Earth's orbit will be able to make claims against latecomers that more stuff in orbit is too dangerous, or harms their interests etc.
At that point it doesn't really even matter if the data center idea is a dud, if you want approval to get your stuff into space, you might have to pay Elon for the privilege.
It's completely stupid on at least three separate fronts: Launching. Take a low margin commodity (running computing hardware) and do it in the literal most difficult and expensive location outside...
It's completely stupid on at least three separate fronts:
Launching. Take a low margin commodity (running computing hardware) and do it in the literal most difficult and expensive location outside of putting them on another planet.
Cooling. Vacuums insulate heat, and computers generate a ton. It takes an absurd amount of costly equipment to keep the International Space Station habitable, and that's not full of servers with high-wattage GPUs. A single server is roughly analogous to a 1KW space heater, and they're stacked on racks 42 high, and there will be hundreds of racks in a small data center.
Electricity. A single H100 GPU, excluding the rest of the server, pulls 700W. Lets just say a single server is still a 1kW spec heater. 42 high, 100 racks = 4200kW, and that's ignoring the larger cost of cooling (each of those 100 racks needs about a half dozen window AC units worth of cooling on earth, and it's harder to cool things in space). 1kW of solar generation is about 2 square meters of space, so we're talking kilometers...
And this is all contextualizing on a small scale. These data centers they're building out with their own power plants dwarf this. Realistically, we don't produce enough solar to meet humanity's needs on earth, and if we could increase that enough to make space servers viable on that single front, we'd have far more need of that to avoid fucking climate change.
The US alone is a big place. And there are always places and people who are willing to take some paltry handouts (or maybe its the other way around, giving tax incentives) and the promise of jobs...
they can't build them on Earth for a reasonable amount of money.
The US alone is a big place. And there are always places and people who are willing to take some paltry handouts (or maybe its the other way around, giving tax incentives) and the promise of jobs (however few) or whatever, even if electricity costs skyrocket. Maybe places like Northern Virginia are getting fed up with data centers, but other places are still willing to host them.
"Figure out cooling" is hand-waving a huge problem away. The ISS requires massive radiators to dissipate heat, while a single datacenter can pump heat to many homes and provide liveable...
"Figure out cooling" is hand-waving a huge problem away. The ISS requires massive radiators to dissipate heat, while a single datacenter can pump heat to many homes and provide liveable temperatures in cold climates.
It seems like many people with no physics/engineering understanding are vastly underestimating how much heat is produced by a datacenter, and/or overestimating the rate of heat exchange in near-vaccuum.
Suspiciously close to the rumored IPO? I'm sure it's just a coincidence, of course. Good that it may be backfiring a bit now that France authorities raided their offices...
Suspiciously close to the rumored IPO? I'm sure it's just a coincidence, of course. Good that it may be backfiring a bit now that France authorities raided their offices https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3ex92557jo
Launching data centers into space seem like a great way to save money on hardware replacement parts and paying for techs to do hardware maintenance. This is a real money saving solution
Launching data centers into space seem like a great way to save money on hardware replacement parts and paying for techs to do hardware maintenance. This is a real money saving solution
XAI owns Twitter and now Space X buys xAI....
This feels like a shell game.
You're right. Because it is. Twitter was hemmorhaging money
and buying it with xAI took Twitter private instead of public. It made a little bit of sense too with the Grok integration. This helps when you can then just fold an unprofitable branch in an otherwise profitable company without having to publicly report on the profitability. Now, without any clear connection between xAI and SpaceX the move just makes me wonder if xAI isn't profitable either, and to be clear most AI companies aren't, so folding it into SpaceX makes it part of a profitable whole.Instead of letting your companies go bankrupt, you fold it into others. Like a shell game.
I'm going to wager that space-datacenters is just a cloud cover hiding the collapse.
Edit: Some clarification.
Edit2: Twitter became private when Elon bought it, not when xAI bought it.
Wasn't X already private? My understanding was that having xAI acquire X was to give it access to the investment money xAI was getting. It's not like there was much demand from private investors to invest in X, and they didn't have other significant revenue coming in, so that was the easiest way for Musk to keep it going.
Twitter itself was public. But you're correct that X was already private by the time he incorporated it into xAI. Musk made X private almost immediately upon buying Twitter through a full share acquisition. Good catch. My mistake!
I would not be surprised to see 'Tesla buys SpaceX' somewhere down the line to help meet the requirements for Musk's trillion dollar pay package.
This is interesting in the sense that SpaceX is the one of Musk's businesses that has been most successful at insulating itself from Musk, whereas Twitter and xAI have been pretty much personal fiefdoms.
Yeah, feels like a bailout to rescue his shitty AI with one of the only businesses' that is actually doing good work. I hope it doesn't drag down SpaceX too much.
Oh I hope it kills SpaceX, that would be hilarious.
Because it is. Xai was reported to lose a billion per month.
Oof, space-based data-centers won’t just be competing with normal data-centers. If a small offline server can securely and effectively achieve the same results albeit somewhat slower, you’ll have to convince people getting work done in seconds rather than minutes or even hours is worth the upload to the space-cloud and extra cost.
I think xAI in space will fail for the same reasons people don’t mind flying for 8 hours across the Atlantic even though we have the technology to make the journey in 4. All in all, do enough people need the speed to be productive?
That's assuming "space based data centers" have possibility to exist at all.
True, but that’s what this acquisition is signaling to the world. SpaceX is bullish on servers in space. To me it looks like a big uninformed gamble, but I guess shareholders are convinced it’s the future.
On the flip-side, it’s a good starting point for a space-based civilization.
It could be something I guess, but the entire idea of space based data centers seems incredibly flawed.
Data centers produce extreme amounts of heat. Getting rid of heat is a massive problem in space. You can only radiate it away so fast. And that's before getting into shielding from cosmic rays and repairability. RAM is expensive enough before you have to put it on a rocket to get it to your server farm for replacement.
The entire idea seems like something that 'sounds sci-fi' so it makes for good sound bites of "maybe we could do this" to suggest alternatives to LLMs taking up power and water on Earth.
From the article:
[...]
A reason this might not be nuts is that SpaceX has launched more satellites than any other company. Their Starlink satellites do work, so maybe they can figure out power, cooling, and logistics for GPU's?
But I expect it will be late.
There is no logical way this would cost less than literally anywhere else, even if you could just snap you fingers and solve the power/cooling problems tomorrow.
This is another "and that's why i need congress to fund me and bend laws" grift. I NEED all this funding to put processors in space that could go on any empty swath of land or even underwater easier.
I can think of one way, though it's rather dubious: if NIMBY opposition to new data centers goes up enough that they can't build them on Earth for a reasonable amount of money.
You could literally build them cheaper in the Shara, the ocean, or the arctic. Let alone the thousands of square miles in various other countries who would gladly take investment for land. It would take a literally catastrophic level of NIMBY. That's before you even look at the US.
The level of money required for this is going to be just astronomically stupid and it's trying to entwine his AI/Datacenter needs with his lift capacity company.
Yeah I find it quite hard to believe running this type of operation in space to be viable. The impression I get more is that Elon wants to monopolize space, like the space in Earth's orbit, and this is a justification for that. Yes I know the Earth is huge and there's a lot of orbital space around Earth, but because of the nature of wireless signals and managing wireless signals, managing objects in space and managing launches to get into space and so on, the more stuff there is in space, the harder it will be for other people to launch more stuff into space. The early entrants into utilizing space in Earth's orbit will be able to make claims against latecomers that more stuff in orbit is too dangerous, or harms their interests etc.
At that point it doesn't really even matter if the data center idea is a dud, if you want approval to get your stuff into space, you might have to pay Elon for the privilege.
It's completely stupid on at least three separate fronts:
Launching. Take a low margin commodity (running computing hardware) and do it in the literal most difficult and expensive location outside of putting them on another planet.
Cooling. Vacuums insulate heat, and computers generate a ton. It takes an absurd amount of costly equipment to keep the International Space Station habitable, and that's not full of servers with high-wattage GPUs. A single server is roughly analogous to a 1KW space heater, and they're stacked on racks 42 high, and there will be hundreds of racks in a small data center.
Electricity. A single H100 GPU, excluding the rest of the server, pulls 700W. Lets just say a single server is still a 1kW spec heater. 42 high, 100 racks = 4200kW, and that's ignoring the larger cost of cooling (each of those 100 racks needs about a half dozen window AC units worth of cooling on earth, and it's harder to cool things in space). 1kW of solar generation is about 2 square meters of space, so we're talking kilometers...
And this is all contextualizing on a small scale. These data centers they're building out with their own power plants dwarf this. Realistically, we don't produce enough solar to meet humanity's needs on earth, and if we could increase that enough to make space servers viable on that single front, we'd have far more need of that to avoid fucking climate change.
But Elmo is a moron, we all know that.
The US alone is a big place. And there are always places and people who are willing to take some paltry handouts (or maybe its the other way around, giving tax incentives) and the promise of jobs (however few) or whatever, even if electricity costs skyrocket. Maybe places like Northern Virginia are getting fed up with data centers, but other places are still willing to host them.
"Figure out cooling" is hand-waving a huge problem away. The ISS requires massive radiators to dissipate heat, while a single datacenter can pump heat to many homes and provide liveable temperatures in cold climates.
It seems like many people with no physics/engineering understanding are vastly underestimating how much heat is produced by a datacenter, and/or overestimating the rate of heat exchange in near-vaccuum.
of course
Suspiciously close to the rumored IPO? I'm sure it's just a coincidence, of course. Good that it may be backfiring a bit now that France authorities raided their offices https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3ex92557jo
Launching data centers into space seem like a great way to save money on hardware replacement parts and paying for techs to do hardware maintenance. This is a real money saving solution