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Ars Technica May 18, 2026 at 11:00 Big Tech Rising Hot

The US space enterprise is desperately waiting for Starship—will it finally deliver?

"This is such a wild ride. The highs are high. The lows are low."

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By Eric Berger Original source
The US space enterprise is desperately waiting for Starship—will it finally deliver?

These days, one would be forgiven for forgetting that SpaceX is, at its core, a rocket company. Consider the company's mega deals over the last year. SpaceX paid $17 billion—more than it has spent developing every one of its rockets—to EchoStar for wireless spectrum to boost its Starlink network. It revealed plans to launch 1 million orbital data centers. SpaceX merged with xAI in a deal that valued Elon Musk's artificial intelligence firm at $250 billion, and it announced plans to become a major computer chip manufacturer. And earlier this month, SpaceX sold an enormous amount of ground-based compute to Anthropic. As a result of all this activity, an impending IPO will value the company at something like $1.5 or $2 trillion. That's trillion, with a t. Read full article Comments

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May 18, 2026 at 17:01 Hacker News

Anthropic Acquires Stainless

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The US space enterprise is desperately waiting for Starship—will it finally deliver?

"This is such a wild ride. The highs are high. The lows are low."

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