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SpaceX Starlink antennas spied at Starship factory for the first time ever
SpaceX’s mysterious Starlink ‘user terminals’ have been spotted in public for the first time ever at the company’s South Texas Starship factory.
Offering a first-ever glimpse of the hardware that individual customers will use to connect to SpaceX’s growing satellite internet network, the lone photo provides a bit more detail than it might initially seem. Effectively invisible up to now, the user terminal – a small antenna system – has been described by both SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and COO/President Gwynne Shotwell as a the single biggest challenge standing in the way of Starlink’s success.
For SpaceX, building a mass-market consumer electronics product more or less in-house was already guaranteed to be a major (and expensive) challenge. The complex requirements and limitations facing an antenna meant for a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet constellation thus magnify a task that is already hard and turn it into a truly unprecedented feat of mass production. Regardless, SpaceX continues to persevere and the first public appearance of user terminals – as well as the consistent company position that service could begin rolling out just a few months from now – are encouraging signs.
The single biggest reason the user terminal component of Starlink is so daunting is relatively simple. Situated in low Earth orbit (LEO) to ensure that Starlink internet service offers latency (ping, response time, etc.) as good or better than fiber, the SpaceX satellites are moving quite rapidly, spending just a handful of minutes over any given spot on the Earth’s surface. Whereas existing satellite internet solutions are located in much higher orbits, including geostationary orbits where the spacecraft actually appear to hover above a fixed point on the ground, ground antennas for LEO internet constellations are much more challenging.
Instead of a literal dish tracking satellites as they streak across the sky, the only truly viable solution is an electronically-steered (phased array) antenna. The problem is that while phased array antennas have plummeted in price over the last five or so years, the going price for existing solutions puts them somewhere between one and two magnitudes too expensive mass-market consumer product. Even if customers loathe Comcast with all their hearts, the vast majority simply can’t rationalize spending thousands of dollars up front for comparable satellite service.
In other words, for Starlink to be viable regardless of the quality or affordability of the satellites themselves, SpaceX must somehow find a way to build millions of user terminals that are simultaneously far more capable than anything in their price range and as good or better than antennas that cost $5,000, $10,000, or even more. The challenge is amplified further by the fact that competing ground-based internet service providers (ISP) like Comcast incur nearly no material cost to add a customer to their network, while customers will typically already have the router and modem needed to gain access.
On top of being at least 5-10 times cheaper than comparable alternatives, Starlink user terminals must also be impressively reliable, bug-free, and easy to set up. Beyond that, though, the amount of room for improvement available to SpaceX is almost comical. Even mediocre customer service and vaguely transparent bills and pricing would likely paint Starlink in a favorable and highly preferable light when compared with the United States’ infamous ecosystem of monopolistic ISPs. Many consumers may happily spend several times more money than they’ve ever spent on internet-related technology just to gain access to Starlink and escape the yoke of their existing ISP.
According to Shotwell, SpaceX could begin rolling out Starlink internet to customers in the northern US and southern Canada once 14 batches – ~840 operational spacecraft – have been launched. SpaceX’s next Starlink v1.0 launch is scheduled as soon as June 23rd, meaning that an initial rollout could come as early as August or September.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, has purchased five additional 380 MW natural gas turbines from South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility to power its growing supercomputer clusters.
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI’s turbine deal details
News of xAI’s new turbines was shared on social media platform X, with user @SemiAnalysis_ stating that the turbines were produced by South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility. As noted in an Asian Business Daily report, Doosan Enerbility announced last October that it signed a contract to supply two 380 MW gas turbines for a major U.S. tech company. Doosan later noted in December that it secured an order for three more 380 MW gas turbines.
As per the X user, the gas turbines would power an additional 600,000+ GB200 NVL72 equivalent size cluster. This should make xAI’s facilities among the largest in the world. In a reply, Elon Musk confirmed that xAI did purchase the turbines. “True,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
xAI’s ambitions
Recent reports have indicated that xAI closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development. The funding, as per the AI startup, “will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products.”
The company also teased the rollout of its upcoming frontier AI model. “Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote in a post on its website.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s xAI closes upsized $20B Series E funding round
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
xAI has closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development.
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
A $20 billion Series E round
As noted by the artificial intelligence startup in its post, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others.
Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
As xAI stated, “This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users, and fuel groundbreaking research advancing xAI’s core mission: Understanding the Universe.”
xAI’s core mission
Th Series E funding builds on xAI’s previous rounds, powering Grok advancements and massive compute expansions like the Memphis supercluster. The upsized demand reflects growing recognition of xAI’s potential in frontier AI.
xAI also highlighted several of its breakthroughs in 2025, from the buildout of Colossus I and II, which ended with over 1 million H100 GPU equivalents, and the rollout of the Grok 4 Series, Grok Voice, and Grok Imagine, among others. The company also confirmed that work is already underway to train the flagship large language model’s next iteration, Grok 5.
“Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock received a price target update from Pierre Ferragu of Wall Street firm New Street Research, citing the company’s growing lead in self-driving and autonomy.
On Tuesday, Ferragu bumped his price target from $520 to $600, stating that the consensus from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was that Tesla’s lead in autonomy has been sustained, is growing, and sits at a multiple-year lead over its competitors.
CES 2026 validates Tesla’s FSD strategy, but there’s a big lag for rivals: analyst
“The signal from Vegas is loud and clear,” the analyst writes. “The industry isn’t catching up to Tesla; it is actively validating Tesla’s strategy…just with a 12-year lag.”
The note shows that the company’s prowess in vehicle autonomy is being solidified by lagging competitors that claim to have the best method. The only problem is that Tesla’s Vision-based approach, which it adopted back in 2022 with the Model 3 and Model Y initially, has been proven to be more effective than competitors’ approach, which utilizes other technology, such as LiDAR and sensors.
Currently, Tesla shares are sitting at around $433, as the company’s stock price closed at $432.96 on Tuesday afternoon.
Ferragu’s consensus on Tesla shares echoes that of other Wall Street analysts who are bullish on the company’s stock and position within the AI, autonomy, and robotics sector.
Dan Ives of Wedbush wrote in a note in mid-December that he anticipates Tesla having a massive 2026, and could reach a $3 trillion valuation this year, especially with the “AI chapter” taking hold of the narrative at the company.
Ives also said that the big step in the right direction for Tesla will be initiating production of the Cybercab, as well as expanding on the Robotaxi program through the next 12 months:
“…as full-scale volume production begins with the autonomous and robotics roadmap…The company has started to test the all-important Cybercab in Austin over the past few weeks, which is an incremental step towards launching in 2026 with important volume production of Cybercabs starting in April/May, which remains the golden goose in unlocking TSLA’s AI valuation.”
Tesla analyst breaks down delivery report: ‘A step in the right direction’
Tesla has transitioned from an automaker to a full-fledged AI company, and its Robotaxi and Cybercab programs, fueled by the Full Self-Driving suite, are leading the charge moving forward. In 2026, there are major goals the company has outlined. The first is removing Safety Drivers from vehicles in Austin, Texas, one of the areas where it operates a ride-hailing service within the U.S.
Ultimately, Tesla will aim to launch a Level 5 autonomy suite to the public in the coming years.
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
Elon Musk’s xAI closes upsized $20B Series E funding round
