Google turns to SpaceX for more AI capacity

Google will pay SpaceX $920 million a month from October 2026 through June 2029 for access to roughly 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, memory and related components, according to a regulatory filing Friday. The arrangement underscores how quickly demand for AI infrastructure is outpacing even the biggest tech companies’ own data center plans.

SpaceX disclosed the deal just ahead of its expected historic IPO, adding another major compute contract to a growing list of commitments. The agreement is similar in duration to a separate deal SpaceX announced with Anthropic in late May, though Google’s access appears to cover about half the compute Anthropic is getting from SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee.

SpaceX did not say which facility Google will use. Elon Musk has previously said the company would reserve its Colossus 2 data center for xAI.

Google said the agreement reflects unexpectedly strong demand for its AI products. “Google Cloud and SpaceX are long-time partners,” the company said in a statement. “This is a short-term, timely agreement to ensure we have bridge capacity to meet surging customer demand for our agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, which has been even higher than we expected.”

The move is notable because Google is already one of the most heavily resourced AI companies in the market, with some estimates calling it the world’s largest single owner of AI compute. Even so, the company’s parent, Alphabet, has been on a major spending push, with more than $180 billion already committed to capital expenditures this year and expectations that spending will rise significantly in 2027.

The filing also says the deal includes a cancellation clause. Either party can terminate with 90 days’ notice after December 31, 2026. Google’s access will ramp up through September at a reduced fee, and if SpaceX fails to deliver the committed amount of GPUs by September 30, 2026, Google can terminate the agreement or accept fewer GPUs at a lower monthly cost.

The contract comes as SpaceX prepares to begin trading on Nasdaq and seeks to raise roughly $75 billion, a sign that the company’s growing role in AI infrastructure may be becoming as important as its rockets and satellites.

Sources:

techcrunch.com