SpaceX has bought $329M worth of Tesla Megapacks so far this year

SpaceX has significantly increased its purchases of Tesla Megapack battery storage devices, spending $295 million in the second quarter and $329 million so far this year, according to the company's earnings report. The purchase illustrates the interconnections between Elon Musk's companies, as Musk is CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla. Musk's AI business xAI was acquired by SpaceX earlier this year, and before that, xAI had bought $430 million worth of Megapacks for its data centers, with $34 million in the first quarter. The batteries are likely deployed at xAI data centers. SpaceX also reported acquiring $131 million worth of Tesla Cybertrucks at manufacturer's suggested retail price. While xAI has relied heavily on natural gas for data center power, large batteries like the Megapack are critical for providing backup power and smoothing out power demand peaks from GPUs, which can incur high charges or overwhelm generators.