- Pakinomist has leaked details of SpaceX’s pre-IPO plans
- They include “making our own GPUs”
- Whether that means chips in the current line of Tesla AI processors or a new category of GPU or AI accelerator is unclear
SpaceX is apparently set to make its own GPUs, based on insights gleaned from its S-1 form ahead of the company’s IPO, though these won’t be products you’ll install on your PC.
Tom’s Hardware picked up the report from Pakinomist, where the news site claimed to have seen the S-1 form filed by companies going public. SpaceX is expected to be worth more than $1 trillion—and likely closer to $2 trillion—when its shares are available on the stock market (theoretically next month).
Part of the form explains larger spending plans to develop AI, which includes a mention of “making our own GPUs” in the listed ‘substantial’ capital expenditure.
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As mentioned, these wouldn’t be a rival to the likes of Nvidia’s GeForce GPUs, but rather graphics cards built for AI tasks, commonly known as AI accelerators.
Of course, Nvidia also makes these solutions – as does AMD – but SpaceX would apparently rather have its own homegrown AI accelerators because, as mentioned in the S-1 filing, it does not have “long-term contracts with many of our direct chip suppliers”. And clearly that will be problematic given the current RAM crisis and its knock-on effects.
What’s not clear 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 next generation of AI5 set to provide a big leap in performance (by a factor of 40x, it’s claimed). It’s possible that the company is referring to this series of AI chips, rather than an entirely separate line of GPUs for AI tasks.
When it comes to making these chips, presumably the ‘Terafab’ project – a huge chip manufacturing center in Texas involving SpaceX, xAI and Tesla – will be involved, although GPUs have not been directly mentioned in relation to this facility.
Analysis: AI5 or something else entirely, it won’t be on your PC
To me at least, this reads more like a pitch for a new product, as opposed to a mention of existing AI chips and calling them ‘GPUs’ informally. That said, looking at the bigger picture as Tom’s points out, Elon Musk has referred to Tesla’s AI5 chips as GPUs and even noted that it’s “basically a GPU” – and you can see where the confusion comes in. All of this could simply boil down to a liberal use of the term GPU and mean exactly nothing.
Anyway, for the average consumer, the point to keep in mind is that whatever SpaceX is up to on the GPU front, if anything, it won’t be relevant to the everyday computer user. It’s all about silicon designed to drive AI performance specifically, and whether it’s technically an AI chip in the existing line, or something else in the form of a new GPU accelerator designed for AI tasks, is all semantics – it won’t be a graphics card as such (as in one designed to process 3D graphics).
Any confusion aside, the overall goal for Musk is clear enough, and that is to secure the AI chip supply by producing them himself, given the aforementioned lack of ‘long-term contracts’ with chip manufacturers.
How comforting this leak will be to potential investors in SpaceX remains to be seen, but Musk seems to have some big plans here, and not for the first time.
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