Elon Musk has received federal approval to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers that is developing hardware for fast data center communications.
The potential acquisition, which was revealed in a Federal Trade Commission filing and first reported by Bloomberg, confirmed the agency expedited its antitrust review. The FTC has given Musk the green light to move forward with the deal.
Mesh Optical came out of stealth in February when it announced that it had raised a $50 million Series A led by Thrive Capital. Before founding Mesh Optical, the startup’s co-founders — Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli — developed the optical communication links that keep thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites interconnected.
The Technology
The Mesh co-founders saw an opportunity to develop optical transceivers for terrestrial data centers, as light-based hardware is faster and more energy-efficient than traditional electrical-based systems. Their technology could dramatically improve the speed and efficiency of data transmission within data centers.
SpaceX has recently entered into agreements with Anthropic, Google, and the open-source AI developer Reflection AI to provide them with compute capacity at its data centers, generating a substantial new revenue stream for the newly public company. Acquiring Mesh could eventually allow SpaceX to improve the efficiency of its data centers, whether they are located on Earth or, in the future, in space.
The SpaceX Connection
Mesh is not the first startup founded by former SpaceX employees to attract Musk’s attention. The acquisition reflects Musk’s strategy of bringing talent and technology back into the SpaceX fold. The optical communication links that the Mesh founders developed for Starlink are a critical component of SpaceX’s satellite network, and adapting that technology for terrestrial data centers could give SpaceX a competitive edge in the growing AI computing market.
The acquisition comes as SpaceX, now a public company valued at over $2.9 trillion, is expanding its business beyond rockets and satellites into AI infrastructure and data center services.
The Bottom Line
The FTC has approved Elon Musk’s acquisition of Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers developing optical hardware for data centers. The technology, which uses light-based systems for faster and more efficient data transmission, could improve SpaceX’s data center efficiency. Mesh came out of stealth in February with a $50 million Series A. The deal allows SpaceX to bring key talent and technology back into the company as it expands its AI infrastructure business.
