'You Have To Go To The Moon': Elon Musk Tells xAI Employees To Stay Ahead In AI Race

Tech billionaire Elon Musk recently told the employees at his artificial intelligence company xAI to build a factory on the Moon. During a recent internal meeting, Musk reportedly spoke about setting up a lunar manufacturing base that could help the company stay ahead in the AI race.According to Musk, future AI systems will need far more computing power than what traditional data centres on Earth can provide. He told employees that companies working on advanced AI may eventually need infrastructure beyond the planet. You have to go to the moon,” Musk said during the discussion. His message was clear. If the goal is to lead in AI, building in space could become necessary.As per the reports, the SpaceX CEO believes a factory on the Moon could manufacture

AI-powered satellites and send them into orbit. The idea includes using a powerful electromagnetic launch system, often called a mass driver, to deploy satellites more efficiently from the Moon. These satellites could then support large scale computing in space.The Tesla CEO has long argued that progress in technology depends on scale. Training advanced AI models already requires massive amounts of computing resources including specialised chips and large facilities. Companies around the world are racing to build bigger data centres to support these needs. Musk’s suggestion takes that competition a step further by looking beyond Earth.During the meeting, Musk also spoke about how powerful AI could become in the future. The discussion comes after the recent merger of xAI and SpaceX. Musk did not share timelines, costs or technical details about building a factory on the Moon. However, he described the Moon as a useful first step before any long-term plans for Mars.This is not the first time Musk mentioned about his love for space, moon and mars. Musk recently mentioned that SpaceX is planning a major pivot from Mars to Moon. Instead of planning human missions to Mars, Musk is now concentrating on building self-growing permanent human settlement on the Moon."For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years," Musk wrote on X.