SpaceX Commits $2.8 Billion to Gas Turbines for AI Data Centers as IPO Nears

4 articles · Updated · WIRED · May 20

$2.8 billion in turbine commitments surfaced in SpaceX’s IPO filing, including an $805 million purchase agreed in March and a pending $2 billion mobile-turbine deal struck in late April.
The spending is meant to power xAI’s Colossus 1 and 2 data centers, where electricity shortages have made portable gas turbines a fast off-grid option for running Grok and other AI workloads.
SpaceX is already leasing server access at the Colossus sites to Anthropic for $15 billion a year, and Musk said Wednesday that the company plans to sign more deals.
The expansion has intensified scrutiny: 19 portable turbines were recently added at Colossus 2 for a total of 46, after the NAACP and other groups sued over alleged unpermitted operations and pollution risks.
As of March, the two sites had enough servers to draw about 1 gigawatt of power, and SpaceX’s filing shows more than $14 billion of construction in progress ahead of a planned Nasdaq debut in coming weeks.

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