SpaceX has significantly increased its procurement of Tesla Megapack battery storage systems, allocating $295 million towards these devices in the second quarter alone, bringing its year-to-date expenditure to $329 million, as disclosed in the company's recent earnings report on Tuesday.
This substantial investment highlights the intricate web of interconnections within Elon Musk's portfolio of companies. Musk, serving as CEO and largest shareholder of SpaceX, also leads Tesla. Notably, his artificial intelligence venture, xAI, acquired his social media platform, X, in 2025, following SpaceX's acquisition of xAI earlier this year.
These industrial-scale battery systems are presumed to be designated for deployment at the company's xAI data centers. Prior to its merger with SpaceX, xAI had already invested $430 million in Megapacks for its data center infrastructure, a significant increase from the $34 million worth of equipment purchased in the first quarter of this year. Furthermore, SpaceX's regulatory filing indicates that as of December 2025, it had procured Tesla Cybertrucks valued at $131 million at their manufacturer’s suggested retail price.
While xAI has predominantly relied on natural gas for its data center power, including the operation of dozens of unpermitted turbines at a Mississippi site in proximity to the Colossus data center project, large-scale battery solutions such as the Megapack remain an indispensable component of modern data center operations.
Beyond offering substantial backup power that can be activated in under a second, these batteries are crucial for supplying additional power to GPUs precisely when needed. AI data centers exhibit an inconsistent power consumption profile, with demand fluctuating significantly based on the requirements for training AI models and executing inference tasks.
These power peaks can lead to considerable charges from local utilities or strain on-site generators. Batteries effectively mitigate these peaks, thereby reducing operational costs and guaranteeing consistent data center functionality.
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