SpaceX’s IPO filing has exposed a striking contradiction at the heart of Elon Musk’s empire: the same entrepreneur who built Tesla on a mission to eliminate hydrocarbon dependency is now spending $2.8 billion on natural gas turbines to power xAI’s data centres, while the NAACP pursues legal action over dozens of unpermitted generators already operating near Memphis.
The filing reveals xAI has spent $697 million on Tesla Megapacks for grid storage but has made no materially significant purchases of Tesla solar panels — a notable omission given Musk’s companies regularly transact with one another, including SpaceX’s $131 million Cybertruck purchase.
Musk’s stated solution is space-based solar power, which SpaceX argues generates five times more energy than terrestrial arrays through continuous illumination. Orbital data centres and power infrastructure are targeted for deployment as early as 2028. Critics note, however, that the economics remain deeply challenging, that AI training may not be distributable across satellites, and that terrestrial solar remains vastly underutilised — representing a simpler path that Musk appears increasingly uninterested in pursuing.
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