India, Feb. 5 -- The fact that two of Elon Musk's companies are merging, has nothing to do purely with accounting or resources allocation or efficiency or any of the typical corporate speak one often hears. The reason for bringing together SpaceX and xAI, Musk says, is to build orbital data centres, or simply put, data centres in space. Cornerstone for success would be to effectively harness the sun's energy to power these space-based data centres. Or as Musk admits in a note released this week, global electricity demand on earth for artificial intelligence (AI) simply cannot be met, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment.

Musk and the combined synergies of SpaceX and xAI believe that launchin...