SpaceX Investors Get Preview of Musk’s AI Handset

SpaceX has reportedly created a handset-style device aimed at transforming how people interact with AI.

Elon Musk’s rocket/artificial intelligence (AI) company had shown the prototype of this device to investors ahead of its recent initial public offering (IPO), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Wednesday (July 1), citing sources familiar with the matter.

The device, said to be slimmer than an iPhone, was designed to run on a proprietary operating system and integrate AI technology from SpaceX’s xAI, some of the sources said. The device is in its early stages and its design could change, the WSJ added.

PYMNTS has contacted SpaceX for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

The WSJ had reported last year that Musk had considered building a smartphone out of frustration over Apple’s control of the distribution of third-party apps, like his social media platform X. However, the WSJ said, it is not easy for newcomers to enter the hardware space.

“The idea of making a phone makes me want to die,” Musk said last October. “But if we have to make a phone, we will.”

But in February, the newly-minted trillionaire denied reports that the company was working on a phone that would connect directly to its Starlink satellite network.

“We are not developing a phone,” he posted on X.

The WSJ’s sources said that the device prototype SpaceX showed its investors draws on the “everything app” concept Musk pushed when he acquired X in 2022.

Also known as “super apps,” the WSJ added, these programs are popular in Asia, letting users do things like transfer money, order food, book trips and play games from one app.

Musk has been exploring this idea with X Money, which includes accounts for everyday spending and saving, as well as the ability to “pay anyone, any way,” including paying rent, sending a wire, mailing a check or paying friends, as covered here recently.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last month about SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor, completed soon after its IPO. That deal followed SpaceX’s absorption of xAI earlier in the year.

“The merger gave SpaceX the computing infrastructure but not the product,” PYMNTS wrote. “Cursor supplied what xAI couldn’t: a widely adopted AI coding tool with a large base of professional software engineers already paying for it.”