News
Elon Musk reveals SpaceX Starship production well underway inside new Texas factory
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has offered a new glimpse inside the company’s rapidly-expanding South Texas Starship factory, revealing the beginnings of the next-generation rocket’s first true assembly line — and a wealth of spacecraft hardware.
Situated two or so miles from the Gulf of Mexico (and Mexico itself) in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX has been seriously planning a presence in South Texas for more than five years. Originally meant to host the United States’ first private orbital launch complex for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, only a small amount of work – known as soil surcharging – was done in the four years that followed SpaceX’s 2014 announcement. In late 2018, however, work began in earnest to build basic launch and manufacturing facilities.
Less than six months later, the first true Starship prototype – known as Starhopper and built from scratch out in the South Texas elements – ignited its Raptor engine for a brief static fire test, bringing the first to facilities and rocket to life less than half a year after they were little more than a pile of dirt and steel sheets. Now, barely nine months after Starhopper’s first static fire test, SpaceX is working around the clock to erect a full-scale rocket factory and build what could become the first orbital-class Starships. On February 9th, Elon Musk offered the best glimpse yet of the incredible progress SpaceX has made in a matter of weeks.
Barely a month ago, the rocket hardware pictured above did not exist, while the giant Tesla-inspired tent containing those Starship parts was a half-finished skeleton. Now, Elon Musk says that SpaceX has effectively completed three of the hardest parts of its first upgraded Starship prototype (SN01), while an additional two (of three) of those parts – known as propellant tank domes – are already in work for a second Starship (SN02).
Outside of the ‘sprung structure’ (i.e. tent) shown in Musk’s February 9th photo, SpaceX contractors appear to be just days away from completing the shell of a second identical tent, ultimately doubling the space available for enclosed manufacturing operations. At the same time as both Starship hardware and production facilities are rapidly coming together, SpaceX is also erecting what is presumed to be a Vehicle Assembly Building – a potentially massive structure that will protect vertical Starships and Super Heavy boosters from the elements while workers assemble them into finished rockets.
Inside the finished tent, SpaceX appears to have set up the first true Starship assembly line (of sorts), expanding from working on a single kind of prototype at a time to concurrent (serial) production of major components. Visible are three Starship bulkheads (tank domes) – two completed instances of which have already been transported outside and integrated with finished ring segments, forming two halves of Starship SN01’s complete liquid methane (LCH4) tank.
Near the back of the tent, work is also ongoing on several Starship SN01 tank rings. In the center, technicians are outfitting Starship SN01’s engine and ‘skirt’ section, where the bottommost tank dome will attach to three (up to six) Raptor engines. To the left, a stack of two rings appears to be stored off to the side, while – only slightly visible in Musk’s photo – another pair of rings is being welded together with the help of a rotating table.
Far from its full capacity and working out of a much smaller tent, SpaceX’s dedicated ringforming station – tasked with turning coils of steel into finished Starship rings – has finished no less than 34 steel rings since the January 1st. SpaceX is still clearly learning and at least third of those rings wound up being scrapped due to defects, but the material cost of all of those rings (~55 tons of steel) is probably less than $150,000. Additionally, those 34 completed segments would reach more than 60 meters (200 ft) tall if stacked, enough to build almost two Starship tank and engine sections – domes excluded.
In simple terms, SpaceX has pivoted away from the more boutique style of prototype fabrication used for Starhopper and Starship Mk1 and is now building Starship SNxx hardware extremely quickly. At the same time, the enclosed manufacturing space available to SpaceX is probably going to double before this week is out. Ultimately, SpaceX’s March 2020 Starship SN01 flight debut target is quickly becoming less and less crazy by the day.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.
There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.
We’ve unified plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium.
Introducing The X Subscription. https://t.co/SvkrVvBa0p
— SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) October 12, 2026
The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.
That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.
The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.
The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
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