OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman reportedly explored deals to acquire a potential rival to Elon Musk's commercial space flight company SpaceX amid a “code red” declaration focused on improving product quality.
Deal Involved Partnering With Or Taking Over Stoke Space
The deal involved Altman acquiring or partnering with Stoke Space, a company founded by former Jeff Bezos-backed SpaceX rival Blue Origin employees, but the deal was called off, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
OpenAI and Stoke Space didn't immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment.
Stoke Space, based out of Kent, WA, describes itself as a company that aims to provide "seamless mobility to, through, and from space." Its "100% reusable" rocket, Nova, possesses "a liquid, regeneratively cooled metallic reentry heat shield."
It boasts a payload capacity of 3 tons to Low Earth orbit and claims to be 100% reusable. Sources cited in the report said that the deal was called off earlier this year.
The report also mentions that Altman was reportedly aiming for a controlling stake in Stoke Space via equity investment.
Elon Musk’s Space-Based Datacenter Goal
The news comes amid a push among companies to establish orbital datacenters with Musk doubling down on the phenomenon and predicting a convergence between his enterprises like Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), SpaceX and xAI.
Musk had earlier touted solar-powered AI datacenter satellites in space as a cost-effective alternative to its ground-based counterparts on Earth. He then shared that chip production remained his only major puzzle piece yet to be solved.
Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai Also Back Space Datacenters
Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Bezos had touted the idea of Gigawatt-scale data centers in space, also agreeing that such installations could prove to be more cost-effective. Bezos is also backing a new startup called Project Prometheus, which will work on AI applications in the automotive, aerospace and scientific research sectors.
On the other hand, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG), also outlined the company's orbital datacenter bet, Project Suncatcher, which aims to launch a low Earth orbit data center powered directly through solar energy in orbit.
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