Report: SpaceX AI division held talks with Microsoft this summer over computing power leasing

People familiar with the matter said SpaceX's AI business unit held talks with Microsoft this summer about renting out computing power externally. The development shows that despite Musk's initial reluctance, he has now fully embraced the new cloud business. The computing power rental business has quickly become one of SpaceX's most profitable segments. Driven by AI labs facing computing shortages, such as Anthropic and Google, the business has already secured billions of dollars in committed orders per month, with more deals still to be finalized. The people said the ultimate direction of the talks with Microsoft remains unclear, and a Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment. Musk's AI startup xAI was merged into SpaceX earlier this year, and building a cloud computing provider was not Musk's original purpose in founding xAI. According to people familiar with the discussions, at one point last year, xAI's computing reserves exceeded its own actual usage, and company executives strongly urged Musk to sell computing power to other AI companies, but Musk rejected the idea. He believed that if xAI transformed into a cloud service provider, it could no longer be regarded as a serious AI lab. Earlier this year, Musk changed his stance and first opened computing power to Anthropic. People involved in the project said SpaceX has now locked in a large number of external customers and urgently needs to expand its computing resources to meet order demand.