{"slug": "ftc-clears-musk-to-acquire-spacex-alumni-startup-mesh-the-optical-hardware-his", "title": "FTC clears Musk to acquire SpaceX alumni startup Mesh, the optical hardware company his data centers need", "summary": "The Federal Trade Commission cleared Elon Musk to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup founded by former SpaceX engineers that makes optical transceivers for AI data centers. The startup, which raised $50 million in February, addresses data center bottlenecks with its high-speed optical technology. The deal gives SpaceX in-house expertise for its growing compute infrastructure.", "body_md": "#### TL;DR\n\n*FTC cleared Musk to buy Mesh Optical, a startup by ex-SpaceX engineers making optical transceivers for AI data centers.*\n\nThe startup was founded last year by three engineers who built the laser links connecting thousands of Starlink satellites, and raised $50 million in February from Thrive Capital\n\n*FTC cleared Musk to buy Mesh Optical, a startup by ex-SpaceX engineers making optical transceivers for AI data centers.*\n\nThe Federal Trade Commission [has cleared Elon Musk to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/ftc-gives-musk-the-ok-to-acquire-spacex-alumni-startup-mesh/), a startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers who build optical transceivers for AI data centers. The FTC granted early termination of its antitrust review on Wednesday, according to [a pattern of Musk acquisitions](https://thenextweb.com/news/spacex-cursor-60-billion-acquisition) that has accelerated since SpaceX went public this month. Bloomberg first reported the clearance.\n\nMesh came out of stealth in February when it announced a $50 million Series A led by Thrive Capital. Its co-founders, CEO Travis Brashears, president Cameron Ramos, and VP of product Serena Grown-Haeberli, previously developed the optical communication links that keep thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites connected to one another.\n\nThe startup builds optical transceivers, devices that convert electrical signals into light so data can travel between servers and GPUs at higher speeds and lower power consumption than traditional copper-based connections. Its flagship product, the Alpha C1, transmits data at more than one terabit per second. The technology addresses a bottleneck that grows more acute as AI training clusters scale to hundreds of thousands of chips.\n\nFinancial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The FTC determined the deal raised no significant competition concerns, fast-tracking a review process that typically takes 30 days. Mesh was founded last year, making this one of the fastest paths from founding to acquisition by one of the world’s most valuable companies.\n\nThe deal fits a strategic gap. SpaceX has signed compute agreements with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI worth [more than $80 billion through 2029](https://thenextweb.com/news/spacex-reflection-ai-6-3bn-compute-deal), turning its Memphis data center complex into one of the largest third-party compute platforms in the world. But SpaceX discovered that [latency issues and aging network infrastructure](https://thenextweb.com/news/spacex-colossus-1-technical-problems-rented-anthropic) inside those facilities limited their usefulness for its own AI training, forcing it to rent capacity to outside tenants instead.\n\nOptical transceivers are the component that determines how fast chips inside a data center can talk to each other. Acquiring the team that solved inter-satellite optical links for Starlink gives SpaceX in-house expertise on a problem that has historically been outsourced to suppliers like Broadcom and Coherent. Whether SpaceX deploys the technology in its existing Memphis facilities or in future data centers, including the orbital compute infrastructure it has discussed with Anthropic, remains to be seen.\n\nSpaceX has not commented on the acquisition. Mesh Optical did not respond to requests for comment from Bloomberg or TechCrunch.\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ftc-clears-musk-to-acquire-spacex-alumni-startup-mesh-the-optical-hardware-his", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/ftc-clears-musk-acquire-mesh-optical-spacex-data-centers", "published_at": "2026-06-27 09:28:52+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-27 10:37:12.952038+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-infrastructure", "ai-startups", "ai-products", "ai-chips", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Elon Musk", "Mesh Optical Technologies", "SpaceX", "Federal Trade Commission", "Thrive Capital", "Travis Brashears", "Cameron Ramos", "Serena Grown-Haeberli"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ftc-clears-musk-to-acquire-spacex-alumni-startup-mesh-the-optical-hardware-his", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ftc-clears-musk-to-acquire-spacex-alumni-startup-mesh-the-optical-hardware-his.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ftc-clears-musk-to-acquire-spacex-alumni-startup-mesh-the-optical-hardware-his.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ftc-clears-musk-to-acquire-spacex-alumni-startup-mesh-the-optical-hardware-his.jsonld"}}