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Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

68 points by toephu2

by kart23

2 subcomments

google: we are commited to carbon free data centers by 2030 (https://sustainability.google/reports/247-carbon-free-energy...)
also google: renting capacity from a data center powered by 27 methane gas turbines on trailers
https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2026/4/whitehous...

by wmf

1 subcomments

With ~$2.1B/month of GPU rental revenue, is xAI now profitable? Are all divisions of SpaceX now profitable?

by cameldrv

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Do people think those numbers are correct? 920 million a month for 110,000 GPUs is $11.61 per GPU hour. That seems very high to me.

by wnmurphy

4 subcomments

Which means more Grok degradation, more severe throttling, etc.
I can't understand why xAI charges 50% more per month for Grok over competitors when it doesn't even gracefully downgrade to a cheaper model when paid subscribers hit the limit.

by sandeepkd

4 subcomments

> SpaceX said in the filing that if it fails to “deliver access to the committed amount of GPUs by September 30, 2026,” Google can immediately end the agreement, or accept the number of GPUs provided at a reduced fee after a one-month grace period.
> After this year, the agreement can be terminated by either party provided they give 90 days’ notice.
Circular financing at its peak for the IPO. There has to be some regulatory body to not allow such shady things

by Havoc

0 subcomment

I guess their training runs aren't going great if they're dumping all the compute they can.
Or I guess juicing the numbers for IPO

by harmmonica

4 subcomments

Tangent alert: a couple of questions for folks who know far more than I do about compute capacity and Google these days...
Lately, like the past few months, I've noticed Google services (search, gmail, drive, maps) running very slowly to the point where, at the moment it happens, I always think it has to be my connection and not Google, but sure enough every time I check a couple of speed tests and they're... fine. And then I don't seem to be having the same latency from other sites/apps. Is there any chance that the commingling of the AI snippet and then directing users into the AI funnel through the text box is actually causing material performance impacts in other Google properties? Probably a dumb question because I can't imagine they would allow performance for broader properties to suffer for AI prompts/chats, but then again all this talk of compute starts making me think otherwise, like the prolific amount of prompting and chatting is causing massive across-the-board performance issues.
Somewhat related, but does anyone use Gemini and end up with the experience where you have a chat and it's obvious, to yourself and to Gemini, that you're trying to find a product to purchase, but Gemini doesn't even link you to what you would think would be the obvious place to purchase the product? This happens daily where I interact with it, it suggests some products, but won't even provide a link to that product or, if it does provide a link, it's to some no name site that wouldn't come up as a highly-ranked paid or organic result through regular Google search. Keeps making me think this is a Google performance problem where they have not figured out how to take the entire AI chat and engineer it back into a simple short keyword phrase to get an acceptable search result.
Btw, if anyone's thinking "why are you using Gemini because it's the worst?" I think that's fair and right. I have... reasons, but they're not super sensible ones.

by fancyfredbot

0 subcomment

In other news, the gold rush has entered a new phase as miners pivot to selling shovels.

by yalogin

1 subcomments

So space data centers are absolutely possible then. I heard a lot of skepticism about the feasibility but it looks like Google and Anthropic looked at SpaceX and trusted them to deliver on the promise and even signed deals worth billions.

by paulpauper

2 subcomments

Space-X is an AI/datacenter company that also makes rockets

by BonoboIO

3 subcomments

How did Elon get so much NVIDIA hardware before everyone else?

by jeffbee

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I thought it was notable that in Google's press release yesterday regarding their new facilities near Amarillo they seemed to go out of their way to point out that the applications are not AI, listing "Search, Gmail, Maps, Cloud, online banking, and 911 systems" instead. I wonder if they find it more convenient to rent an existing one rather than face public scrutiny for building another "AI data center".

by salkahfi

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Related / same story from different source (Bloomberg), submitted earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416941

by superkuh

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Another way to read this is, "Twitter's AI dept. has been doing so badly they don't have a use for billions of dollars of hardware they bought."

by verdverm

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Google is getting in bed with some folks even more unsavory than themselves. The thing I noted most from I/O was how prominent and proud the are of partnering with Palantir. "Do no evil" has become "Let's do evil"

by sorenjan

1 subcomments

Is this another circular investment to help pump up the stock valuation? Why would Google need to rent that much compute?
> Google parent Alphabet has made a windfall from backing SpaceX, which was worth $12 billion at the time of its 2015 investment, and is looking to go public at a valuation of over $1.75 trillion