tech
Elon Musk drifted from Larry Page over a decade ago, but their companies are closer than ever
SpaceX and Google have a long and complicated relationship, but they were both celebrating this week after Elon Musk's company held its blockbuster IPO.
TL;DR
- Elon Musk and Larry Page's friendship soured in 2015 due to differing views on artificial intelligence.
- Google holds a 4.9% stake in SpaceX, valued at approximately $100 billion, following SpaceX's IPO.
- SpaceX recently signed a deal to lease AI infrastructure to Google for $920 million per month over 32 months.
- Musk co-founded OpenAI to counter Google DeepMind's influence in AI research.
- Both companies have competed in the self-driving car sector, with Waymo (Google) and Tesla (Musk) taking different technological approaches.
- SpaceX became a key Google Cloud customer in 2021 for its Starlink service.
- An alleged affair between Musk and Brin's ex-wife, Nicole Shanahan, further complicated personal relationships.
- SpaceX is now providing AI compute capacity to Google, showcasing a role reversal in cloud services.