Elon Musk is bringing the same revolutionary thinking that helped him upend the car industry to the data center business with promises this week to put up to a million new satellites in the sky.

As with SpaceX, then, Mr Musk is gambling Tesla’s future on AI, and his belief that he can harness his existing businesses to dominate the technology. Plenty of doubters have scoffed at his grand ambitions before. But never has Mr Musk put so much on the line. ■

On Monday, Elon Musk announced that he was merging two of his companies, SpaceX and xAI, in a deal said to be worth $1.25 trillion. The reason, Musk said in an announcement, was that in order for AI to grow, it needed to go to space.