Tech
Musk needed a new vision for SpaceX and xAI. He landed on Moonbase Alpha.
“Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you,” CEO Elon Musk proclaimed yesterday following a restructuring that saw a stream of former executives exit the AI lab.
This is an interesting recruitment strategy after the company’s merger with Musk’s rocket maker, SpaceX, and the combined company’s anticipated IPO. You might think that xAI employees ought to be fascinated with achieving AGI, using deep learning models to disrupt traditional software companies, or simply bad wordplay like “Macrohard.” But instead, Elon is going to the moon.
After outlining plans to build AI data centers in orbit, the primary synergy between the two companies, Musk took the idea further. “What if you want to go beyond a mere terawatt per year?” Musk asked. “To do that, you have to go to the moon…I really want to see a mass driver on the moon that is shooting AI satellites into deep space.”
In Musk’s telling, the step beyond data centers orbiting Earth is even larger computers in deep space. And furthermore, Musk says the best way to achieve that is to build a city on the moon to manufacture space computers and hurl them into the solar system using a big maglev train.
If that all feels a bit much, veteran Musk watchers know there’s a clue about where the discussion appears in a video of an all-hands meeting xAI shared with the public. The slide describing the moon base comes at the end of the presentation deck, where, during SpaceX pep talks, Musk typically shares renderings of SpaceX rockets landing on Mars and waxes rhapsodic about the future of multi-planetary humanity.
Notably, the moon base comes just after SpaceX has publicly backed away from its long-held goal of colonizing Mars. Now, with xAI in the corporate fold, Musk needs a new science fiction metaphor for the future: In this case, the Kardashev Scale, a theoretical measure of galactic civilizations coined by the eponymous Soviet astronomer in the 1960s. The idea is climbing the scale of energy usage — early civilizations figure out how to leverage all the power sources on their planets, and then (hypothetically) go to space and build infrastructure to capture the energy of the sun.
With the moon base, Musk says the company could harness “maybe even a few percent of the sun’s energy” to train and operate AI models. “It’s difficult to imagine what an intelligence of that scale would think about,” he told his staff, “but it’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen.”
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In the nine years since Musk unveiled his plan for Martian exploration and colonization, the vision has been an effective hiring tool for SpaceX: The founding tale of Musk’s interest in the Red Planet offered a long-term vision that united the company’s various development efforts, and signaled the company’s ambition among other space contractors that settled for incremental work on government priorities. “Occupy Mars” t-shirts offered a visible symbol of SpaceX’s aspirations.
That’s where the hypothetical moon base fits in — part of a long history of Musk wrapping his companies in a powerful narrative. It’s one million people living on Mars, but now catering to a future where AI is the most interesting thing. Martian mission creep became apparent less in Musk’s May 2025 Starship update, when the presentation ended with a now-cancelled vision of Tesla Optimus robots clomping across the Red Planet.
There was just one problem with SpaceX and Mars: No one wanted to pay them to go there. Plans announced in 2016 to repurpose the company’s Dragon spacecraft as a Mars lander were abandoned the next year after the technical challenges became too costly. And since Musk unveiled the vehicle that would become Starship in 2016, its capabilities, initially intended for Mars colonization, have been scaled back to focus on two more remunerative tasks: launching satellites for the Starlink comms network and $4 billion worth of contracts to land astronauts on the moon for NASA.
Unlike a multi-planetary civilization, there may be some logic in having SpaceX purchase a money-burning AI and social media to build data centers in Earth orbit, particularly if forecasts of rising demand and costs on the ground come true. Experts suggest that it might be possible in the 2030s.
Hypothetically, building satellites on the moon would require a lot more of Musk’s other dreams coming true first. Scientists and startups are experimenting with building chips and other precision components in space. But mass-producing many tons of advanced computers on the moon means we’re living in a universe where it is dramatically cheaper to get to space, which is the central requirement for those technologies, getting all the raw materials for such an effort to the moon, plus whatever is required for a “self-sustaining city.”
In a sense, that’s the point: This is the, uh, stretch goal. If meme-happy retail investors buy the argument, they could turn SpaceX shares into the next Tesla. The engineers, AI or aerospace, who Musk needs to achieve his goals may find the shift jarring. But the vision is one way to explain what xAI is about, other than an LLM perhaps best known as a pervert. As one of the company’s departing executives said on his way out the door, “all AI labs are building the exact same thing, and it’s boring.”
Mass-producing a solar system-scale supercomputer on the moon is many things (I’m going to get emails for not using the word “insane”), but it is not the exact same thing, and it is not boring.
Tech
Nothing opens its first retail store in India
Nothing, the hardware company backed by Tiger Global, is opening its first retail store in India, its biggest market. The store is located in Bengaluru, where a large chunk of Nothing’s userbase in India is concentrated, the company said.
The new, two-storied location will show off Nothing’s products and other projects. Customers will also be able to buy hardware products and other merchandise from the store and have select items customized.
“We wanted to create a fun space. It is kind of inspired by all the parts that are related to the brand. For instance, the factory: if you buy a product, there’s like a production line where the product comes out. We also show machines where phones go through testing, like USB port testing or water resistance testing. So we just wanted to bring that world together,” the company’s co-founder and CEO Carl Pei said.
The store will feature products from both Nothing and CMF, its budget brand, which it spun off last year. Notably, CMF is headquartered in India and has a joint venture with local Indian ODM (original design manufacturer), Optiemus.
Pei mentioned that both brands are differentiated in terms of the products they offer, which fall in different price ranges, as well as the audience they target.
“Nothing is more niche with a higher price. CMF is more [targeted towards] mass. You know it’s mass, but it’s not like just off-the-shelf rebrand products that usually what occurs in this price point. They are also products that we put a lot of care into,” he said.
India has been Nothing’s strongest market, with over 2% market share in smartphones, analyst firm IDC told TechCrunch last year. It also noted that Nothing was the fastest-growing brand in the country in Q2 2025, with 85% growth in shipments year-over-year.
Other hardware makers are building aspirational retail stores in India, too. Apple is set to open its sixth store in the country this month, situated in Borivali, Mumbai, for instance.
This is the first Nothing store outside of London, where the company is headquartered. The startup said that it plans to open two more stores in Tokyo and New York, but didn’t provide timelines for openings.
The company raised $200 million in Series C funding at a $1.3 billion valuation last year, led by Tiger Global, along with investors like GV, Highland Europe, EQT, Latitude, I2BF, and Tapestry. Nothing has raised $450 millon to date.
Tech
India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund
India has cleared a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital program that will channel government money into startups through private investors, doubling down on its effort to finance high-risk areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and other sectors broadly referred to by the industry as deep tech.
First outlined in the January 2025 budget speech by India’s finance minister, the ₹100 billion fund won cabinet approval this week (more than a year after the speech), allowing the government to move ahead with deployment. A previous iteration of the program, launched in 2016, committed ₹100 billion to 145 private funds that have invested more than ₹255 billion (about $2.8 billion) in over 1,370 startups, according to official data released on Saturday.
The program is structured as a fund of funds, a common venture capital model in which governments back startups indirectly by committing capital to private investment firms. It is designed to take a more targeted approach than its 2016 counterpart, focusing on deep-tech and manufacturing startups that typically require longer time horizons and larger amounts of capital, while also backing early-stage founders, expanding investment beyond major cities and strengthening India’s domestic venture capital industry, particularly smaller funds, per the Indian government.
At the announcement on Saturday, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw highlighted the scale of India’s startup expansion, pointing to figures shown on a presentation slide indicating the number of startups has grown from fewer than 500 in 2016 to more than 200,000 today. The slide said more than 49,000 startups were registered in 2025 alone, the highest annual total on record.
The cabinet approval follows recent changes to India’s startup rules aimed at easing pressure on deep-tech companies. New Delhi doubled the period for which such firms are classified as startups to 20 years and raised the revenue threshold for startup-specific tax, grant and regulatory benefits to ₹3 billion, or about $33 million, up from ₹1 billion previously.
The approval comes just ahead of the government-backed India AI Impact Summit, where global AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia are set to participate alongside Indian corporates such as Reliance Industries and Tata Group. India, the world’s most populous country and one of its largest internet markets with more than a billion online users, has become an increasingly attractive arena for global tech companies looking to expand their user base.
At the same time, private capital has become harder to secure. India’s startup ecosystem raised $10.5 billion in 2025, down just over 17% from a year earlier, even as investors grew more selective and sharply reduced the number of deals. The number of funding rounds fell nearly 39% to 1,518 transactions, according to data from Tracxn.
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Vaishnaw said the new venture capital program would remain flexible, adding that “extensive consultations have taken place with all stakeholders.”
Tech
Roku to launch streaming bundles as part of its efforts to continue growing its profitability
Roku shared its fourth-quarter earnings for 2025 this week, as well as some exciting plans in the pipeline. The company is rolling out new streaming bundles, expanding its $3 subscription service, Howdy, to more platforms, and partnering with more premium streaming services following the successful addition of HBO Max.
Launching bundles in 2026 is a smart move, as it could attract more viewers looking for enticing deals amid rising subscription prices. Many streaming platforms have been increasing their rates recently, and Roku aims to appeal to cost-conscious consumers. The positive impact of HBO Max on Roku’s premium subscriptions has encouraged the company to continue this strategy by adding more top-tier partners, which is likely to drive growth going forward.
Additionally, Roku launched its ad-free subscription streaming service, Howdy, last year and plans to expand its availability beyond the Roku platform. While specific details remain undisclosed, Roku CEO Anthony Wood stated at CES last month that the goal is to distribute Howdy widely, saying, “We want to distribute it everywhere.”
Other highlights include Roku users streaming 145.6 billion hours of video in 2025, marking a 15% increase from 2024. The company is also nearing the milestone of 100 million streaming households, though it has decided to report this figure less frequently.
Financially, Roku delivered an impressive quarter, posting net income of $80.5 million, a rebound from a $35.5 million loss in the same period last year. Total revenue for Q4 2025 reached $1.4 billion, representing a 16% year-over-year increase.
Looking ahead, Roku is optimistic, projecting total net revenue of $5.5 billion and gross profit of $2.4 billion.
“In 2023, our priority was to rightsize our cost structure and reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2024, and we achieved that goal a full year ahead of schedule,” Wood told investors during the call yesterday afternoon. “Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, we are confident in our ability to sustain double-digit platform revenue growth while continuing to grow profitability.”
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