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Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

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Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#501

Post by simoncion »

jaycroft wrote: post #369
simoncion wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...burning ten thousand tons of toxic e-waste annually... Expressing water usage in gallons makes it seem really large, too. NASA says[0]: Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons (44 tonnes or 44,000 kilograms) of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day. If we assume that they're all the heavier v2 units, the total mass of the orbital portion of Starlink is ten point four tons. [1] If we assumed that they last…

I think you missed a factor of 1000 somewhere in there: Each satellite weighs about 1 ton, there are about 10,000 of them. That is 10,000 tons in orbit for the constellation, not 10. Assuming a 5 year decay, that's 10000/5/365 ~= 5 tons / day. Still about 10% of the natural incoming material, but considerably more than your "six hours worth per year".

> I think you missed a factor of 1000 somewhere in there... there are about 10,000 of them. That is 10,000 tons in orbit for the constellation, not 10.

I did. what. the. hell? Maybe my swiss-cheese brain read the "," in 10,413 as a decimal separator? I guess that's what I get for posting while old. Thanks for the correction and supporting arithmetic.

Though, I still stand by my "please for the love of everything, get to complaining about CO2 because this thing you're complaining about is a damn nothingburger" conclusion. (I am sufficiently aware to notice that that you're not OP, so the "you" in that pseudoquote is not directed at you.)

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#502

Post by Reubend »

ww520 wrote: post #415
SoftTalker wrote: post #306

> $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029 for access to “approximately 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, memory, and other related components. That's about $8,400/month per "component" is that in the ballpark at all with what a month of dedicated/exclusive access to an NVIDIA GPU would go for?

Plus electricity, labor, and maintenance?

Yeah I was wondering about this too. It seems like way too much per GPU considering the purchase price of a B200 was around $40k last time I checked. So if we naively ignore the price of electricity and maintanence, it would only take 5 months before renting is a worse deal than buying outright.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#503

Post by codechicago277 »

l23k4 wrote: post #458
dghlsakjg wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive investors and retirement accounts are heavily in on automatic indexing. This deal has been pushed hard to be included prematurely in the indexes to the point that Nasdaq changed the rules. The accusation is that these changes were made so that index funds will buy this stock automatically far earlier than they would have previously. Given the… uh… astronomical asking price, it looks like SPCEX is meant for El…

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It’s been covered extensively and is common knowledge. One example after a 5 second google: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/may-jobs-report-stock-marke...

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#504

Post by l23k4 »

codechicago277 wrote: post #503
l23k4 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It’s been covered extensively and is common knowledge. One example after a 5 second google: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/may-jobs-report-stock-marke...

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Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#505

Post by delecti »

laughing_man wrote: post #446
jazzyjackson wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m out of the loop, why is compute better /after/ being launched into space? Is the idea just to be co-located within the ISP to reduce round trip time to the LLMs?

There would be some benefits, assuming you could do it for a reasonable cost. For one, you have effectively uninterruptible power using solar panels in space. And it's free, too, once you have the hardware in place. And you don't have to deal with any of the site selection stuff you have for terrestrial data centers. No NIMBYs. No politicians trying to extort bribes. No water problems. In space there are no earthquak…

Yeah, launch costs alone make it infeasible, and power being "free" exacerbates the cost (gotta get all those panels up there). Cooling is also dramatically harder, plus shielding, and it makes repair/upgrade basically impossible.

I'm not going to assert that large scale space compute will never happen, but I feel confident saying it won't happen this decade or next.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#506

Post by pqtyw »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #280
tristanj wrote: post #205

This 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…

So masterful that a random guy on HN can see right through it. Let’s just call it what it is. It’s just basic fraud. They created a very temporary revenue injection right around the time of the IPO to defraud investors as much as they possibly can. Some businesses do this kind of thing just before they die because…why not?

Or SpaceX just has too many GPUs and nothing to do with them besides renting them out to someone since their AI products suck and nobody uses them?

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#507

Post by solenoid0937 »

davedx wrote: post #484
rootusrootus wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSLA has a forward PE of ~200x. That is probably the most logical comparison with SpaceX. Proof that the market can stay irrational for quite a long time. It fills me with a bit of dread about the future of the market. I am 10 years out from retirement, have a bit over 1M sitting in that market, and I wonder if it will implode in the meantime. I am fairly committed to the "invest like a dead man" (i.e. index funds, n…

Start gradually converting your equity to bonds is the standard advice on that timeframe. If you're dreading equity drawdowns, that's what fixed income is for.

This is absolutely terrible advice and is out of touch with modern financial understanding. Bonds feel psychologically safer, but lead to failure more often than total market equity portfolios, even when you account for market crashes.

https://youtu.be/p25PPBgMiEk

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#508

Post by l23k4 »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #498
l23k4 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Matt Levine from Bloomberg saying something along the lines of "lol, obviously the indices have to do this, they'll look like fools if they don't because these will be the biggest companies on the market". He famously spends much of his time making fun of Musk, but seems to reject the idea of his influence here. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-26/ind... Perhaps you can provide a single co…

That is one of the columns. The headline makes my point succinctly. Your paraphrase of the column misses the crucial point. A Nasdaq index fund doesn’t buy a company unless it is in the Nasdaq. Under the old rules SPCEX was ineligible for listing. Now Nasdaq index funds all have to buy. Index funds by nature do not selectively buy stocks, if the stock is in the index, they buy, that’s their mandate. That’s the game,…

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Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#509

Post by doxeddaily »

Alive-in-2025 wrote: post #337
benl wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bet is that demand for AI tokens will continue to grow exponentially. And that SpaceX will be able to deploy and rent out GPUs to serve those tokens faster than anyone else. The wrinkle is that they are planning to deploy those GPUs in space. That’s what people are most skeptical about, I think!

Space data centers need years of time to design, build, and deploy, 5-10 at least, and that's after they solve their multiple very difficult or impossible problems. How will they cool them? There are just simple ideas like giant structures to radiate the heat away, but you say you need to put lots of mass in orbit? Like fsd, will take decades to figure things out.

SpaceX already has 10,000 satellites on orbit that are basically preview versions of space data centers. They've already paid 5 years of that 5-10 year timeline you outlined.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#510

Post by pqtyw »

mock-possum wrote: post #332
tristanj wrote: post #205

This 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…

Utterly nauseating. Why would google help prop up this company and its figurehead? Maybe this is finally the straw that breaks the camel’s back for me and google.

Well Google needs GPUs, SpaceX has GPUs but nothing to do with them since their AI business failed. Why is that insufficient?
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