SpaceX inks compute deal with Reflection AI, an open source AI lab

SpaceX, the company that's supposed to be taking us to Mars, has instead become a hyperscale landlord for AI compute. Because nothing says 'boldly going where no one has gone before' like renting out GPU farms to train models that could, in theory, make humanity obsolete before we even reach the red planet.

The deal runs from July 1, 2026 through 2029 — a full three years of uninterrupted, high-performance compute for an open-source lab with no apparent safety constraints. Reflection AI is free to develop and release whatever models emerge from this cluster, and given the track record of open-source releases — from LLaMA to Mistral to the countless fine-tuned jailbreaks — we can expect a steady stream of increasingly capable systems that regulators can't touch and bad actors can't resist. The contract gives them 'immediate access,' which in AI terms means they start training tonight, not after some safety review.

One has to admire the business model: SpaceX collects $150 million/month while providing the infrastructure that could accelerate the very AI risks everyone is vaguely worried about. The Nvidia GB300 chips are among the most powerful available, and they'll be humming 24/7 for three years, churning out weights that will almost certainly be released under a permissive license. It's privatised gains and externalised risks — the American way. At least the rockets are still grounded due to weather, so there's that small mercy.