SpaceX is building a gas turbine blade factory as it grapples with a global scramble to secure energy supplies for AI data centers.
Elon Musk said on Saturday that the rocket company will manufacture its own gas turbine parts, adding that solar power alone would not be enough to power its massive AI infrastructure buildout.
In a post on X, Musk wrote that SpaceX and Tesla were both racing to build their own massive solar panel factories "as fast as possible" — but added that this would not be enough to meet surging demand for electricity.
"Natural gas will still be needed to supplement and bootstrap solar for several years," Musk said, adding that SpaceX would seek to build its own gas turbine blades and vanes — which are notoriously difficult to manufacture — to speed up production.
"By doing in-house casting at SpaceX, we can accelerate natural gas turbines coming online by up to 18 months, which is a profound game-changer," the billionaire said.
The Information first reported on SpaceX's plans. SpaceX has also begun advertising roles for a "blades and vanes foundry" in Bastrop, Texas, where the rocket company manufactures its Starlink terminals.
"Power generation poses one of the key challenges that could slow the worldwide adoption of AI," read one of the job descriptions.
The AI boom has led to a massive buildout of data centers across the US, which in turn has put electricity supplies under strain and sparked a nationwide public backlash.
Some AI companies have attempted to address their data center's hunger for power by building natural gas power plants.
OpenAI, Amazon, and Microsoft have all struck partnerships to power data centers with natural gas, while Meta's "Hyperion" data center in northern Louisiana will require 10 new gas power plants to supply it with electricity.
The rush to secure natural gas generators has sparked a global shortage of gas turbines and pushed some aerospace startups to repurpose their jet engines into turbines to fuel AI data centers.
SpaceX has used mobile gas turbines to power its Colossus data centers in Mississippi and Tennessee, where they have attracted local complaints over noise and pollution.
Like many other tech giants, SpaceX is spending aggressively on building new data centers and securing AI compute as it seeks to build ever more powerful AI models.
The company spent $16 billion on AI infrastructure in the second quarter of 2026, with executives telling investors to expect "very similar" levels of spending for the next two quarters.