FTC approves Musk's acquisition of Mesh antitrust application, involving AI data center optical network layout

According to the latest disclosure by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Musk has obtained antitrust approval for the acquisition of the optical network startup Mesh Optical Technologies, which means the FTC has completed a rapid antitrust review and will not challenge the transaction on competitive grounds, clearing a major regulatory hurdle for the advancement of the deal. However, it has not yet been disclosed whether the transaction has been signed or completed.

Mesh was founded by former SpaceX engineers, and its core product is optical transceivers for AI data centers, which can improve energy efficiency, reduce latency, and enhance reliability compared to traditional network hardware, in order to meet the demand for millions of optical connections brought about by the growth of AI computing clusters. The founding team was involved in the development of the laser communication system for SpaceX's Starlink satellite network and plans to deploy optical communication technology into space in the future, adapting to the inter-satellite laser communication needs of orbital data centers and AI satellite networks. The company completed over $50 million in financing led by Thrive Capital in February of this year.

Acquiring Mesh is one of SpaceX's initiatives to strengthen the competitiveness of large-scale computing clusters. Currently, SpaceX has listed AI computing power as a core business segment, and its xAI has been operating a total of approximately 1GW computing power with the Colossus and Colossus II training clusters, making it the first company to deploy coherent gigawatt-level AI training clusters; among them, Colossus II will add over 400MW of computing power and introduce over 220,000 GB300 chips. It has signed computing power cooperation agreements with Anthropic, Google, Reflection AI, and others, directly competing with large-scale cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. This year, SpaceX has also reached a Terafab chip manufacturing plan with Tesla and Intel, extending its vertical integration capabilities in chip design and manufacturing.

In the past week, SpaceX's stock price ended its upward trend, closing at $153.23 per share, down over 32% from its peak of $225.64 per share.