SpaceX AI ambitions face skepticism as Grok lags frontier models
SpaceX shares rose over 5% after a week of rocket milestones, including Starship reaching Earth orbit. Decoder host Nilay Patel said Elon Musk is behind in AI, and Musk has acknowledged Grok trails Anthropic's newest model. In the meantime, SpaceX's AI revenue comes largely from renting Nvidia computing power to Google and Anthropic, with reported run rates of $11 billion and $15 billion a year.
SpaceX's launch week included Starship's first orbital flight, which also released 26 Starlink V3 satellites, plus a Dragon mission delivering NASA's Crew-13 to the space station. A rideshare launch carried Alphabet's Project Suncatcher satellite, testing whether Google's AI chips can operate in orbit. Shares gained over 5% Friday morning.
On the AI side, Musk has said Grok 4.7 falls short of Anthropic's Opus 5.5, predicting parity with frontier models next year. Revenue currently comes from GPU rentals — roughly $11 billion annually from Google and $15 billion from Anthropic, whose deal begins in October.
Investors and AI developers may feel the effects most. If SpaceX's rental arrangements continue, the company could remain financially tied to competitors' success regardless of Grok's standing, while customers gain access to scarce computing capacity. A lagging Grok might temper expectations around Musk's AI ambitions, though steady launch revenue could offset that. Broader questions about concentration of AI infrastructure in few hands may draw scrutiny, but outcomes remain uncertain.