Elon Musk is considering the purchase of Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup launched last year by three ex-SpaceX engineers that specializes in hardware for rapid data center communication.
This potential acquisition came to light through a filing with the Federal Trade Commission, which noted that the agency has sped up its antitrust evaluation process.
Mesh Optical publicly emerged from its initial development phase in February, announcing that it had secured $50 million in Series A funding, primarily from Thrive Capital.
Prior to establishing Mesh Optical, the company’s founders—Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli—were instrumental in creating the optical communication links that maintain connectivity among countless SpaceX Starlink satellites.
Recognizing a gap in the market, the Mesh co-founders aimed to design optical transceivers for land-based data centers, as these light-based systems offer superior speed and energy efficiency compared to conventional electrical systems.
Recently, SpaceX has formed partnerships with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI, an open-source AI developer, to supply them with computing resources from its data centers, thus establishing a significant new revenue avenue for the now-public company. By acquiring Mesh Optical, SpaceX could enhance the performance of its data centers, both on Earth and potentially in outer space in the future.
