- PK Press Club leaked details about SpaceX’s plans ahead of its IPO
- They include “making our own GPUs”
- It’s unclear whether this means chips in the current Tesla AI processor lineup, or a new category of GPU or AI accelerator.
SpaceX is apparently ready to make its own GPUs, based on information from its Form S-1 before the company’s IPO, although these aren’t products you’ll install on your PC.
Tom’s Hardware picked up the PK Press Club report, with the news site saying it had seen Form S-1, filed by the publicly traded companies. SpaceX is expected to be worth more than $1 trillion — and probably closer to $2 trillion — when its shares become available on the stock market (next month, in theory).
Part of the form explains the major spending plans to develop AI, which includes a mention of “manufacturing our own GPUs” in the “substantial” capital expenditures listed.
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As noted, these would not be a rival to Nvidia’s GeForce GPUs, but rather graphics cards designed for AI tasks, commonly known as AI accelerators.
Nvidia also makes these solutions, of course – as does AMD – but SpaceX would apparently prefer to have its own local AI accelerators, because as noted in the S-1 filing, it does not have “long-term contracts with many of our direct chip suppliers.” And this is clearly going to be a problem given the current AMR crisis and its repercussions.
What’s unclear is whether SpaceX’s mention of “GPUs” in the filing could refer more broadly to Tesla’s AI processors, which are currently on the AI4 generation, with the new AI5 generation expected to deliver a big jump in performance (by a factor of 40, it is claimed). It’s possible the company is referring to this series of AI chips, rather than an entirely separate line of GPUs for AI tasks.
As for manufacturing these chips, the “Terafab” project – a massive chip manufacturing hub in Texas that involves SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla – will likely be involved, although GPUs haven’t been mentioned directly in connection with that facility.
Analysis: AI5 or something else, it won’t be on your PC
At least to me, this seems more like a play for a new product, as opposed to mentioning existing AI chips and informally calling them “GPUs.” That said, looking at the bigger picture, as Tom’s points out, Elon Musk referred to Tesla’s AI5 chips as a GPU, and even noted that it was “basically a GPU” – and so you can see where the confusion comes in. This could all just boil down to a liberal use of the term GPU, and mean precisely nothing.
Regardless, for the average consumer, the thing to keep in mind is that whatever SpaceX does GPU-wise, it won’t be relevant to the everyday computer user. This is just silicon designed to specifically drive AI performance, and whether it’s technically an AI chip in the existing lineup, or something different in terms of a new GPU accelerator designed for AI tasks, that’s all semantics – it won’t be a graphics card per se (as in, a card designed to process 3D graphics).
Confusion aside, Musk’s overall goal is pretty clear: ensure the supply of AI chips by producing them himself, given the mentioned lack of “long-term contracts” with chipmakers.
It remains to be seen how comforting this leak will be to potential investors in SpaceX, but Musk appears to have big plans here, and it’s not the first time.
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