SpaceX to take over Elon Musk's AI firm

Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX is taking over his artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, as the billionaire takes steps to unify some of his many different business interests.

SpaceX on Monday confirmed the deal to acquire xAI, a smaller firm known for its Grok chatbot, posting a memo from Musk about the merger on its website.

In the note, Musk said the combination would form an "innovation engine" putting AI, rockets, space-based internet, and media under one roof.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Last month, his electric car company, Tesla, also announced it had invested $2bn (£1.46bn) into xAI.

Musk told Tesla investors at the time that he envisioned xAI functioning as an "orchestra conductor" for Tesla factories employing autonomous robots.

Tesla moved forward with its plan despite objections from some shareholders, who had questioned the decision to divert resources to another Musk firm. In a vote last year, abstentions and votes against the idea outnumbered those who approved.

SpaceX is also reported to be working on plans to list its shares for public trading.

In the memo announcing the xAI merger, Musk said he thought space would provide the solution to the energy needs faced by AI firms.

"In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale," he wrote.

He said launching AI satellites from Earth would be the "immediate focus", but added that the deal would also help advance his bigger ambitions.

"The capabilities we unlock by making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars and ultimately expansion to the Universe," he wrote.