SpaceX Shares Rise 7% as Musk Flags Power, Cooling as AI Constraints

On SpaceX's earnings call, Musk said semiconductor availability is no longer the major issue limiting compute supply. "I think people are starting to realize the constraint on deployment of super intelligence is more in power and cooling and infrastructure than it is in chips," Musk said, according to CNBC. The company uses "SI," the term President Donald Trump's September executive order directed executive branch departments and agencies to use instead of AI; Musk has adopted it inside SpaceX, CNBC reported.

Musk said SpaceX has redeployed some engineers who worked on its rocket-ship innovations to address power and cooling bottlenecks. "It's a team that has been able to achieve results that are an order of magnitude greater than the rest of all competitors in space combined and applied that same team to the deployment of terrestrial compute. So, this is a bit like the New York Yankees playing in Little League. It's not fair," he said, according to CNBC. He claimed SpaceX can deploy power and cooling infrastructure "at a rate that is vastly faster than anyone else" and may at some point be faster than all competitors combined.

SpaceX plans to bring 2.5 to 3 gigawatts of compute power online by the end of the year, Musk said. He said he is "fairly confident" SpaceX can add 10 gigawatts of compute in 2027, and he described a "non-zero possibility" — which he called small but no longer zero — that SpaceX could have more than 20 gigawatts of super intelligence compute online next year. CNBC said one gigawatt can provide electricity to more than 750,000 homes for a year.

Musk's comments on constraints echoed a Business Insider report cited by CNBC this week that Amazon is racing to buy AI hardware even though it lacks the power infrastructure needed to bring that compute online. For suppliers, Musk's targets point to more demand for components. SpaceX can make some of what it needs in-house, including blades and vanes for gas-powered turbines, but CNBC reported the buildout points to upside for GE Vernova, a leading maker of heavy-duty gas turbines, and Eaton, which supplies electrical and cooling equipment used across the grid and inside data centers.

SpaceX's AI business includes social media site X, the recently acquired coding assistant Cursor and the Grok chatbot. In August, SpaceX launched an agentic AI offering called Grok Bot, similar to Meta Platforms' Muse, CNBC reported. Such agentic systems can complete multi-step tasks with little or no human intervention and represent an advance over the generative AI chatbots of a few years ago. "We're seeing the fastest growth of a product that I've ever seen in my life for Grok Bot," Musk said, according to CNBC. "We're also seeing that the usage of Grok Bot grows over time per user. It does not decline." CNBC said the AI product commentary preceded Meta's earnings report on Wednesday night. Musk wants to merge SpaceX with his electric vehicle and solar company Tesla, CNBC reported, a combination that would tie the rocket and AI company more closely to the industries driving the stock market.