Musk's Mesh Acquisition Gets Green Light from FTC, Boosting Data Center Efficiency

Elon Musk's potential acquisition of Mesh Optical Technologies has cleared a major hurdle, with the Federal Trade Commission expediting its antitrust review. Mesh Optical, founded by three former SpaceX engineers, develops cutting-edge hardware for fast data center communications. The startup emerged from stealth mode in February, announcing a $50 million Series A funding round led by Thrive Capital. Its co-founders, Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli, previously worked on the optical communication links that connect SpaceX's Starlink satellites.

They saw an opportunity to bring their expertise to terrestrial data centers, where optical transceivers can significantly outperform traditional electrical-based systems in terms of speed and energy efficiency. The acquisition could have significant implications for SpaceX, which has recently partnered with companies like Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI to provide compute capacity at its data centers. By acquiring Mesh, SpaceX may be able to improve the efficiency of its data centers, both on Earth and potentially in space. This move could also generate new revenue streams for the company, further solidifying its position in the tech industry.

Source: TechCrunch