As Grok flounders, SpaceX bets future on beating Big Tech at AI

Key points

• Elon Musk’s SpaceX has highlighted AI as the tentpole of the company’s future, projecting a multi-trillion-dollar market opportunity that rivals the total value of all US economic activity.
• But the company must first win over customers who generally favor AI models from competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
• SpaceX described its traditional space launch and satellite business as playing a supporting role to its fledgling AI business in financial disclosures that preceded an expected initial public offering of company stock.
• That stems from SpaceX having formally acquired Musk’s company xAI earlier this year—the SpaceXAI division now oversees the Grok AI models and the associated Grok chatbot previously developed by xAI.
• The SpaceX S-1 filing claimed that the company has “the largest actionable total addressable market in human history” and highlighted AI as representing most of that opportunity at an estimated $26.5 trillion market—a number that comes close to rivaling US...