For years, SpaceX’s mission has been clear: get people to Mars.
“The most powerful thing we can do is to establish a second, self-sustaining civilization outside of Earth,” said Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX. Forbes said in 2003, a year after the company was founded. “And the only place that’s really feasible is Mars.
As a reminder of this goal, SpaceX has a mural in the cafeteria at its Hawthorne, California campus depicting the evolution of human settlement on the Red Planet. The company also sells “Occupy Mars” T-shirts, which Mr. Musk regularly wears in public.
But over the past six months, Mr. Musk has shifted SpaceX’s priorities. Although the tech mogul once predicted that humans would take off to Mars as early as 2024, he didn’t emphasize reaching the planet.
Instead, SpaceX announced Tuesday that it has struck a deal with artificial intelligence startup Cursor, which could lead to a $60 billion acquisition of the young company. And Mr Musk, 54, suggested more moonshots could attract more attention and investment to SpaceX as it prepares for one of its biggest initial public offerings.
Among his announcements are AI data centers that could orbit the Earth, factories on the moon and an AI chip factory, all of which will contribute to a utopian future where humans never have to work, he said.
This week, some investors and fund managers are expected to get a closer look at those plans when they visit SpaceX facilities in Texas and Tennessee ahead of the IPO, said one person briefed on the matter. Some investors were also scheduled to visit SpaceX’s Hawthorne campus next week, the person said.
Changing targets caused whiplash.
“It’s a hallucinogenic business plan,” said Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, the investment firm that owns SpaceX stock. He added that Mr Musk has “lost his mind” as he tries to drum up excitement for an initial public offering.
Shifting goals ahead of an IPO would be unthinkable for most corporate leaders, who are focused on their core business and trying to present stability to potential investors. Mr. Musk’s new goals for SpaceX raise questions about how much shareholders can take his word for it, corporate governance experts said. Still, the billionaire has an uncanny ability to bring investors along for the ride, they said.
“In most other corporations, where the CEO makes promises that don’t come true, investors tend to react in an adverse way, and it usually doesn’t last long,” said Brian Quinn, a law professor at Boston College. But with Mr. Musk, he said, “People believe him or want to believe him.”
IN online postsMr Musk acknowledged SpaceX’s “shift in priorities”. However, he said the new goals do not eliminate the Mars plan and are a stepping stone to making humans a multiplanetary species.
“The capabilities we unlock by making space data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars, and ultimately expansion into space,” Musk wrote in a letter to SpaceX employees in February.
Mr. Musk has a history of making bold predictions that don’t come true. But while his timelines may be imprecise, his long-term vision has brought enormous opportunities, supporters said.
“Elon is always on the right track,” said Peter Diamandis, a SpaceX investor and founder of the XPrize Foundation, a nonprofit that supports technology development. “His time frames may be off, but he will get there eventually.
Mr. Musk and a SpaceX spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
Over the years, Mr. Musk has acknowledged his lack of business plans and his reliance on instinct. Eight former SpaceX executives and employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, told The New York Times that during their time at the company, they grew accustomed to Mr. Musk’s directives and his use of social media for product announcements or changes.
In 2014, Mr. Musk, now known as X, announced on Twitter that SpaceX would hold an event to unveil the second version of its Dragon capsule, a spacecraft designed to carry passengers and cargo from orbit, two former employees said. The vehicle wasn’t close to completion, so his team struggled to piece together a complete design and action, former employees said.
“We want to take a big step in technology and really create something that was a leap change in spacecraft technology,” Mr. Musk said at an event where he unveiled a vehicle that could land anywhere on Earth using jet propulsion. (SpaceX later scrapped that idea in favor of a parachute landing after Mr. Musk found the Dragon’s jet propulsion impractical, three of the people told The Times.)
That same year, Mr. Musk became interested in satellite Internet and began meeting with Greg Wyler, the founder of OneWeb, a satellite start-up, said two people familiar with the discussions, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. The relationship never materialized, and Mr. Musk struck out on his own, opening a SpaceX engineering office in Redmond, Wash., in 2015 to develop Internet satellites.
The resulting service, Starlink, underwent layoffs as SpaceX invested in research and development. But the gamble paid off: Starlink now has 10 million subscribers and generate $8 billion in revenue by 2024, according to documents obtained by The Times.
Now it seems that Mr. Musk is trying to replicate the Starlink playbook, but with data centers in space. SpaceX has not previously focused on AI, much less orbital data centers, three former SpaceX executives said. But after Google and others began discussing orbital data centers last year, Mr. Musk he declared in October that “SpaceX will do it”.
In January, SpaceX filed paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission to potentially launch one million satellites for an “orbital data center system.” A week later, it announced a merger with xAI, Mr Musk’s AI start-up.
“In 36 months, but probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be in space,” Musk said in a recent podcast.
This year, more than 20 engineers and researchers left xAI, whose products lag behind those of OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
Mr Musk appears eager to push SpaceX further into AI In the deal with Cursor announced on Tuesday, SpaceX said a tie-up with the young AI company, which makes software for writing code, would “allow us to create the most useful AI models in the world.
Another new target is the Moon. While two former SpaceX executives said Mr Musk had previously rejected a moon landing because it was not a new achievement, he said in February that the company had “shifted its focus to building a self-growing city on the moon”.
With the success of NASA’s recent Artemis II mission and the agency’s commitment to further lunar exploration, Mr. Musk may see an immediate financial opportunity, former SpaceX executives said.
SpaceX “will seek to build a city on Mars and will start in 5 to 7 years, but the first priority is to secure the future of civilization and the Moon is faster,” Musk said on February 8.
That month, he also spoke with some SpaceX employees about building lunar factories for AI satellites and launching those satellites into orbit using a space catapult, according to a transcript of a staff meeting obtained by The Times.
Mr. Musk mentioned Mars only once.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
