FTC Clears Musk’s Acquisition of SpaceX Alumni Startup
▼ Summary
– The FTC cleared Elon Musk to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup by former SpaceX engineers that makes optical transceivers for AI data centers.
– Mesh Optical was founded last year and came out of stealth in February with a $50 million Series A led by Thrive Capital.
– Its co-founders previously developed optical communication links for SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, and its Alpha C1 transceiver transmits data at over one terabit per second.
– The acquisition addresses a strategic gap for SpaceX, as latency and aging network infrastructure limited the usefulness of its Memphis data centers for its own AI training.
– Financial terms were not disclosed, and the FTC fast-tracked the review, finding no significant competition concerns.
The Federal Trade Commission has given Elon Musk the green light to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers that specializes in optical transceivers for AI data centers. The agency granted early termination of its antitrust review on Wednesday, expediting a deal that continues a pattern of Musk acquisitions accelerating since SpaceX went public this month. Bloomberg first reported the clearance.
Mesh Optical emerged from stealth in February, announcing a $50 million Series A round led by Thrive Capital. The company’s co-founders,CEO Travis Brashears, president Cameron Ramos, and VP of product Serena Grown-Haeberli,previously engineered the optical communication links that connect thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites in orbit.
The startup manufactures optical transceivers, devices that transform electrical signals into light, enabling data to travel between servers and GPUs at higher speeds and lower power consumption than traditional copper-based connections. Its flagship product, the Alpha C1, achieves transmission rates exceeding one terabit per second. This technology directly addresses a growing bottleneck as AI training clusters scale to hundreds of thousands of chips.
Financial details of the acquisition remain undisclosed. The FTC determined the deal posed no significant competition concerns, fast-tracking a review process that typically takes 30 days. Founded just last year, Mesh represents one of the fastest journeys from founding to acquisition by a company with a market cap exceeding a trillion dollars.
The acquisition fills a strategic gap for SpaceX. The company has signed compute agreements with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI worth more than $80 billion through 2029, transforming its Memphis data center complex into one of the world’s largest third-party compute platforms. However, SpaceX discovered that latency issues and outdated network infrastructure within those facilities limited their effectiveness for its own AI training, forcing it to lease capacity to external tenants instead.
Optical transceivers are the critical component that determines how quickly chips inside a data center can communicate with each other. By acquiring the team that solved inter-satellite optical links for Starlink, SpaceX gains in-house expertise on a problem historically outsourced to suppliers like Broadcom and Coherent. Whether the technology will be deployed in SpaceX’s existing Memphis facilities or in future data centers,including the orbital compute infrastructure it has discussed with Anthropic,remains uncertain.
SpaceX has not commented on the acquisition, and Mesh Optical did not respond to requests for comment from Bloomberg or TechCrunch.
(Source: The Next Web)
