OpenAI Chief Sam Altman has explored building or buying a rocket company as he eyes space-based data centers and intensifying competition with Elon Musk.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is quietly exploring a move into the commercial space industry, a step that would place him in more direct competition with Elon Musk, according to people familiar with the discussions. The initiative signals Altman’s growing interest in deploying advanced AI systems beyond Earth, including the possibility of building data centers in orbit.
Wall Street Journal reported that Altman has evaluated whether to build a rocket company from scratch or acquire an existing launch startup. Over the summer, he approached Washington-based Stoke Space, one of the sector’s rising players. Talks intensified in the fall, with proposals that reportedly included a multibillion-dollar equity investment that could have given OpenAI a controlling stake. Those discussions have since stalled, sources told the Journal.
Any move into space launch services would bring Altman into a field dominated by Musk’s SpaceX, which has transformed the global space industry with reusable rockets and the Starlink satellite network. SpaceX remains far ahead of competitors in launch volume, technology maturity, and commercial contracts.
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Altman and Musk share a long, complicated history. They co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but disagreements over funding and the organization’s mission led to Musk’s exit in 2018. Their rivalry intensified after OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in 2022, which reshaped the global AI landscape and pushed Musk to accelerate his own AI ambitions through xAI and its chatbot, Grok.
Demand for computing power continues to surge, and analysts expect global data-center requirements to grow between 19% and 22% annually through 2030, according to McKinsey. That has fueled interest in novel energy solutions and unconventional locations — including space — where power-hungry models could run with fewer terrestrial constraints.
Altman has publicly hinted at this vision. In a June 2025, podcast with his brother, he asked aloud, “Should I build a rocket company?” He added that he hopes humanity will one day consume “far more energy than we could ever generate on Earth.”
While exploring ventures beyond the atmosphere, Altman is also confronting immediate competitive pressure at home. This week he reportedly declared a “code red” inside OpenAI over concerns that the company was not moving fast enough in response to Google’s latest advances. Google’s Gemini 3, unveiled last month, outperformed ChatGPT on multiple benchmark tests, prompting Google to call it a “new era of intelligence.”
Altman publicly congratulated Google, describing Gemini as a “great model,” but privately acknowledged that OpenAI must move quickly. “We know we have some work to do,” he told employees. “But we are catching up fast.”