SpaceX Lands $30 Billion Google AI Deal Ahead of $1.7 Trillion IPO

SpaceX disclosed in a regulatory filing that Google will pay it $920 million per month for AI computing power — a contract running from October 2026 through June 2029 that totals roughly $30 billion. The deal positions Elon Musk's rocket company as a serious infrastructure player in the AI race, not just a launch provider, and comes as SpaceX prepares for an IPO expected next week that could value the company at more than $1.7 trillion.

Under the agreement, Google gains access to approximately 110,000 Nvidia AI chips through SpaceX. Google framed the deal as a short-term bridge to handle unexpectedly high demand for its Gemini Enterprise agent platform. The context is stark: Google Cloud reported in April that it had $460 billion in unfulfilled contract backlog, signaling that even the search giant's own massive infrastructure can't keep pace with enterprise AI demand.

The Google deal follows a similar arrangement SpaceX struck last month with Anthropic, which is paying an even steeper $1.25 billion per month for computing capacity. Both Anthropic and SpaceX are expected to go public this year, and these deals serve dual purposes — generating real revenue while demonstrating to IPO investors that SpaceX's AI infrastructure ambitions are commercially validated.

SpaceX owns xAI, Musk's AI lab, which has largely trailed competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google despite operating a massive supercomputer in Memphis. Musk has been aggressively expanding the AI footprint ahead of the IPO: he announced a large chip factory in Texas and in April disclosed a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, the AI code-writing assistant. Google already holds roughly a 5% stake in SpaceX and has been exploring using it as a launch partner for Project Suncatcher, an initiative to place data centers in orbit.