Elon Musk's rocket company builds spaceships, sure. But the real money this week isn't going up — it's humming away in a data center in Memphis, where SpaceX has become the most in-demand landlord in AI. Turns out the path to the stars runs straight through a colossal pile of GPUs.

A $6.3 Billion Handshake

Reflection AI has agreed to pay SpaceX $150 million every month, starting July 1, 2026, and running through the end of 2029 — a deal that totals roughly $6.3 billion if it runs the full course. In exchange, Reflection gets access to Nvidia's coveted GB300 chips at Colossus 2, SpaceX's sprawling compute facility in Memphis, Tennessee.

There's an escape hatch, too: the contract reportedly includes a 90-day exit option after the initial three-month stretch. So if Reflection decides the rent's too high, it can bail — though good luck finding GB300 capacity anywhere else right now.

Tenant Number Four

Here's the genuinely wild part: Reflection isn't even the headline tenant. This is SpaceX's fourth major external compute lease, following deals reportedly worth around $45 billion with Anthropic, $30 billion with Google, and another with the coding startup Cursor. A rocket company has quietly become one of the most important compute brokers on Earth.

It's a neat illustration of where the AI boom's real leverage sits. Models come and go, benchmarks get beaten by lunchtime, but everyone — Google included — needs somewhere to plug in the GPUs. Own the data center and the power contracts, and you collect rent no matter which lab wins the model wars.

Musk didn't just build the rockets. He built the gold rush's general store.

Source: Build Fast with AI