Daniel Mercer
To alleviate the challenges faced by tech bloggers in their writing, xAI has undergone a significant rebranding:
We are now @SpaceXAI. pic.twitter.com/ema66xDWC9
— SpaceXAI (@SpaceXAI) July 6, 2026
I’m thrilled about this change. Can you imagine the dread of typing “xAI” with its awkward lowercase ‘x’? Not to mention the hassle of explaining that the operator of the Grok chatbot, owned by Elon Musk, was acquired by SpaceX back in February, before SpaceX went public last month?
The animation featured in SpaceXAI’s post on X (did I mention SpaceXAI owns X?) is, to put it mildly, visually unappealing. Witness the transformation as the xAI logo, which resembles a rushed project from a graphic design class, morphs into the stunning and iconic SpaceX logo—a truly impressive change. Now, the AI component is hardly noticeable.
Despite the logo’s shortcomings, this rebranding represents a significant step toward clarity. It’s now simply SpaceX… AI. SpaceXAI. I no longer need to provide explanations.
In March, Elon Musk stated that Grok, SpaceXAI’s flagship product, was so flawed it required a complete overhaul. Subsequently, SpaceX initiated the acquisition of Cursor, an AI coding tool. Since then, Musk has indicated that Grok is on track for a “major improvement.”
Grok foundation model V9-Medium (1.5T) has completed training. Evaluations look promising. A significant amount of Cursor data was incorporated during supplementary training, with more enhancements on the way.
Fine-tuning is underway, and reinforcement learning will commence in a few days. Expect a public release in 2 to 3 weeks.
This will…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 25, 2026
Last year, the company previously known as xAI reportedly invested $6.4 billion, which was double its total revenue. the AI sector of SpaceX is crucial to Elon Musk’s vision for SpaceX as a historically significant company with a potential “total addressable market” of $28.5 trillion. In this narrative, the connection between space infrastructure, exploration, and AI is vital.
The SpaceX prospectus articulates this vision as follows:
We believe that AI infrastructure in space can harness the virtually limitless energy of the Sun, enabling AI to become a transformative force in understanding the universe and enhancing daily life for all humanity.
Elon Musk has also conveyed a version of this idea during discussions with xAI employees, as he did in an all-hands meeting in February. His remarks included, rather fancifully:
So the next step beyond Earth data centers are Earth orbital data centers. We will be launching, with SpaceX, orbital data centers capable of processing at the level of 100 to 200 gigawatts per year. That’s not cumulative; that’s per year. we envision a pathway to potentially launching as much as a terawatt per year of compute from Earth.
But what if you want to exceed a terawatt per year? To achieve that, you must venture to the moon.
In any case, best of luck to the team at SpaceXAI, who are expected to achieve all of this while their parent company continues to make waves in equity markets. The current governance structure makes it impossible to displace Musk, regardless of circumstances. Quirky or not, his ambitious ideas have garnered considerable support from our financial elite, making it essential for them to hold true, or we could all face dire consequences.
Ethan Carter
