380 dollars per second... Good to know I could afford my own data center for an appreciable fraction of a minute.
For context, Alphabet earns ~$12k/sec.
Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
201–210 of 1001 posts
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Space-based datacenters simply won't work. That people are talking about them shows Musk is the greatest snake oil salesman the world has ever seen.
Can anyone explain how the thermals will work? One of the biggest challenges on Earth is cooling the data center, and it's at least as challenging in space.
The earthbound equivalent would be strapping each chassis to the back of a dedicated solar panel and having the panel double as a giant heat sink. The problem is that doesn't work on the surface due to (at least) rain, the day/night cycle, and the cost of real estate.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#203A huge chunk of SoaceX value in their filing is attributed to their AI technology (aka Grok). I believe it’s 90% or more… Now, it seems they’re leasing the infrastructure required for Grok to scale to Anthropic and Google. I wonder how that math works…
But what is xAI? I thought that was the company that had the compute + Grok, the AI company? Since when does SpaceX (which I thought was a space company?) own AI-compute hardware and/or can do model hosting? Are all of Musks companies just one big thing now where the names no longer matter, or how is it supposed to work?
Edit: seems I'm just a bit behind: "xAI — now part of SpaceX ", seems really strange for a space company to buy an AI company, but I guess rather that, than the other way around.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Launch isn't profitable simply because ongoing Starship R&D is eating into it. A lot of opex, capex, and pre-revenue. If they start running Starship anywhere near the way they do Falcon 9, it'll flip into profits. A lot of big bets SpaceX made ride on Starship coming online. I'm honestly surprised Starlink is already so profitable without it. One of their big named bets includes: orbital datacenters. Which puts this…
Orbital datacenters sound like a dangerous bet. I couldn't think of a worse place for a lot of delecate electronics.
Boomers and luddites won't let them be built on earth so no other option really
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#205This is a masterful piece of financial engineering by Google and SpaceX.
Google purchased 10% of SpaceX over a decade ago. After dilution they probably own around 5%.
SpaceX is valued at a whopping 94x revenue. This deal increases SpaceX's revenue by $11 billion per year. If SpaceX maintains this revenue multiplier, then this single deal boosts SpaceX's valuation by 94 x 11 billion = $1 trillion dollars. Google owns 5% of SpaceX, so they make 50 billion dollars. Google spends 10 billion and makes 50 billion, $40 billion profit.
The even better part is that because of this deal, SpaceX is now profitable. The S&P requires companies to demonstrate 12 months of profits before they can enter the S&P 500 index. SpaceX lobbied to have this profitability requirement removed, but S&P said no and refused to rewrite the rules.
Now with this incredible deal, SpaceX is now GAAP profitable under the existing rules, and they get to join the index next year without a rule change.
Truly a brilliant deal for everyone involved.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah... What am I missing? Like why isn't this just laughed at when it's proposed?
I felt the same way about the "tube with an air hockey table in it." But here I am fifteen years later eating crow as I take the hyperloop to Vegas.
Isn't the Vegas Loop just a car tunnel? As far as I know, there aren't any actual hyperloops[1] involved, just a narrow highway, even if they deceivingly brand it "Loop".
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its main business is connectivity. Starlink generated over 10B last year. Becoming a broader infrastructure company with xAI.
> Starlink generated over 10B last year An entire one-hundredth of their proposed valuation!
Yeah, crazy for a company with nothing but the largest civilian satellite network and what amounts to a monopoly on space flight.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#208Sorry, what? Does this mean that SpaceX are the only company that really did build some datacenters to put all the million of GPU/TPU/whatever they all talk about everyday? I mean, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft told investors they spent more than $1B per day last year in CapEx... why on Earth do they (well, Google and Anthropic at least) need to rent compute to SpaceX, of all companies?
Other companies built data centers but also built products that soak up their data center capacity.
xAI built data centers, and products that are mostly good for nonconsensual porn and confirming a small group’s biases. So they have a lot of excess capacity, and might as well rent it to the adults.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think the military can’t or won’t dump billions into this to make killing people with drones more effective? It’s a engineering challenge not impossible.
There are asteroids with concentrations of precious metals more valuable than earth's entire economy. Why don't we just send up spaceships to mine them and send the haul back to earth? What country would say no to free money? After all, it's just an engineering challenge, not impossible.
The numbers on that are at least somewhat questionable. Even ignoring that you'd crash the market (thus it's not actually worth what it first appears to be) what is the total fuel cost to adjust the orbit of the target asteroid to land the entire thing back on the earth? Because that's what you're doing bit by bit as you shuttle loads of ore back.
Now if you have space based manufacturing or fuel production on the other hand ...
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Space-based datacenters simply won't work. That people are talking about them shows Musk is the greatest snake oil salesman the world has ever seen.
Can anyone explain how the thermals will work? One of the biggest challenges on Earth is cooling the data center, and it's at least as challenging in space.
Thermals are one among many really big challenges that require costly solutions.