SpaceX has a $30 billion deal to provide Google with AI computing power

SpaceX disclosed in regulation filing on Friday, Google will pay it $920 million a month for computing power, pumping billions of dollars into Elon Musk’s rocket company as it prepares for a sensational initial public offering.

The deal, which begins in October and runs through June 2029, could earn SpaceX about $30 billion in total. It also helps establish SpaceX – which owns Mr Musk’s artificial intelligence lab, xAI – as a major infrastructure provider as companies compete in a fierce global race to dominate artificial intelligence.

As part of the deal, Google will get access to about 110,000 AI chips from Nvidia, which Google says will help it meet higher-than-expected customer demand for its AI models. The tech giant said in April that its cloud business had a total of $460 billion in contracts yet to be fulfilled in revenue, indicating huge demand for its services.

“Google Cloud and SpaceX have been longtime partners,” a Google Cloud spokesperson said in a statement. “This is a short-term and timely deal to ensure we have the bridge capacity to meet growing customer demand for our Gemini Enterprise agent platform, which has been even higher than we expected.”

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SpaceX struck a similar deal last month to provide computing power to Anthropic, another leading artificial intelligence lab. Anthropic, which is expected to go public this year, pays SpaceX $1.25 billion a month.

SpaceX is expected to go public next week in a deal that could value the company at more than $1.7 trillion and make Mr. Musk a billionaire. As part of that process, the company has shed more light on its financial details in recent weeks to lure investors.

Mr Musk has built a huge supercomputer in Memphis to power xAI. However, the company is largely behind competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

Prior to SpaceX’s IPO, Mr. Musk had increasingly relied on AI. He touted xAI’s computing power as an asset, demonstrating that it could be turned into revenue through deals with Anthropic and Google.

Mr Musk also announced details of a giant chip factory he is building in Texas. And in April, SpaceX announced a deal to buy AI start-up Cursor, which makes an assistant for writing code, for $60 billion.

The deal with Google deepens ties between the search giant and the rocket maker. Google owns a roughly 5 percent stake in SpaceX and has explored using SpaceX as a launch partner as Google seeks to put data centers in space, an effort known as Project Suncatcher.