The competition in the AI sector has sparked a surge in demand for training data, prompting companies to aggressively gather as much information as possible.
A recent article from Bloomberg reveals that SpaceX, under the leadership of Elon Musk, is actively seeking customer and operational data from bankrupt or struggling startups. While these conversations are still in the preliminary stages and may not culminate in binding agreements, sources indicate that successful negotiations could afford SpaceX access to essential AI training data at lower costs.
This tactic mirrors a recent move by Google, which acquired business data from Spirit Airlines for $10 million during a bankruptcy auction to enhance its Gemini models. This acquisition raised privacy issues, particularly since it involved sensitive information like employee conversations from Microsoft Teams along with a plethora of company emails.
For SpaceX, acquiring data could primarily support the training of Grok AI models, which the company has developed through its subsidiary, xAI. Currently, SpaceX utilizes posts from the platform X to refine its Grok models, unless users choose to opt out. However, to enhance these models further, they require high-quality real-world data.
At present, Grok is trailing behind rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta in several performance metrics. This context explains SpaceX’s staggering investment of around $15.8 billion in AI initiatives just last quarter.
xAI’s leading model is Grok 4.6, and plans are in motion to roll out Grok 4.7 this month, with Grok 5 slated for launch later this year. Musk has expressed ambitious hopes for Grok 5.
“With Grok 5, expected to launch before year-end, we will integrate the entirety of SpaceX's historical data,” he stated during SpaceX’s first earnings call last month. “Essentially, all the data generated by SpaceX over the past 25 years will inform Grok’s training. We anticipate this will position Grok as the premier engineering AI.”
