STOCKS | SpaceX Rises as Data Center Buildout Model Changes, UK Defense Orders Draw Attention

SpaceX shares rose on Thursday as investors parsed several major developments around the rocket and satellite company. According to Sina Finance, The Information reported that SpaceX and Chief Executive Elon Musk are overhauling how data centers are built, a shift that could slow new construction. The report said the new management team from the rocket division is prioritizing reliability over speed, adding backup power and cooling systems and conducting more extensive testing before launch. SpaceX shares were at $150.84, up $3.29, or 2.23%, at 12:38:45 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, with the market open. The new approach contrasts with how Musk's xAI, now merged into SpaceX, built the Colossus campus in Tennessee. The AI unit took 122 days to bring its first data center online, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the pace was "beyond human level." The Information also reported that the Memphis data center failed last week because of construction issues, taking part of the Grok large language model offline and affecting compute customers including Anthropic and Google. More than 10 former data center executives have left, and SpaceX rocket division engineers have taken over their roles. Musk visits the Memphis campus almost every Sunday, and after the outage he posted on X that the company was "taking corrective measures to prevent similar incidents from happening again." At the same time, SpaceX's defense business received a boost. The United Kingdom has bought nearly $40 million of satellite services from SpaceX, deepening its reliance on the company. The UK Ministry of Defence bought about $17.6 million of Starshield services and another $22.3 million of standard Starlink equipment, with roughly 1,000 Starshield terminals and 500 Starlink terminals deployed. The United Kingdom is also the first country outside the United States to publicly confirm use of the Starshield system. Even with insider shares becoming eligible for sale this week, SpaceX shares still closed slightly higher on Thursday. SpaceX went public on June 12 at an IPO price of $135, with a valuation of $1.77 trillion and $85.7 billion raised, while the free float was less than 5%.