Thomas Black, Columnist

Musk’s AI Startup Is a Payload SpaceX Can’t Afford

February 4, 2026 at 10:30 AM UTC

Thomas Black is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the industrial and transportation sectors. He was previously a Bloomberg News reporter covering logistics, manufacturing and private aviation.

This is not an ATM.
Photographer: Sergio Flores/AFP/Getty Images

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SpaceX has a big head start on the technology of reusable rockets, which drastically lowered launch costs and helped spawn a commercial space industry that is gaining momentum year by year.

As SpaceX prepares for its huge Starship rocket to enter commercial service, nothing could derail the company from its leadership position — except perhaps a truly bad decision to chain a financial anchor around SpaceX’s neck. That looks to be the case with Elon Musk’s surprise move to tuck xAI, his cash-gulping AI startup, under SpaceX.