Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) has built an unusual two-way relationship with SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX): the Google parent stands as both a major shareholder and a significant customer of the rocket and satellite company.
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Alphabet disclosed this week that it held $94.1 billion of SpaceX shares as of June 30, marking the first time the company has valued its SpaceX stake against public market prices since the company’s June 12 IPO.
The position remains largely frozen for now. About $80 billion sits under short-term sale restrictions, while the remaining $14.1 billion stays locked up through the third quarter of 2027.
Google’s $920 Million-A-Month AI Computing Deal
Separately, Google agreed in June to pay SpaceX $920 million a month for AI computing capacity, a deal worth roughly $11 billion annualized.
The arrangement grants Google access to approximately 110,000 Nvidia graphics processing units along with associated CPUs, memory and infrastructure housed in SpaceX’s data centers.
Full monthly payments run from October 2026 through June 2029, totaling roughly $30 billion over the contract term and either party can terminate the deal after Dec. 31, 2026 with 90 days’ notice.
The juxtaposition is striking on paper, but the two arrangements are structurally separate. Alphabet’s equity stake reflects a decade-old strategic investment dating to 2015, when SpaceX carried a $12 billion valuation.
The compute contract, by contrast, functions as a commercial vendor relationship tied to surging AI infrastructure demand across the industry.
Next Up: Data Centers In Orbit?
Separately, Google and SpaceX are reportedly negotiating a launch deal to put data centers into orbit, with Alphabet working alongside Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL) on satellite builds under Google’s Project Suncatcher initiative, targeting prototype launches by 2027.
The orbital approach would sidestep Earth’s power grid constraints, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai had suggested “tiny racks of machines” in satellites could become a normal way to build data centers within a decade.
If SpaceX and Google partner on orbital data centers, the two companies’ financial ties would deepen further, adding a space-based compute layer on top of Alphabet’s $94.1 billion equity stake and its existing $920 million-a-month deal for ground-based AI computing capacity.
Google’s relationship with SpaceX now spans three distinct layers: a $94.1 billion equity stake built over a decade, a $920 million-a-month contract for terrestrial AI computing capacity running through 2029 and early-stage talks over orbital data centers that could extend the partnership into space itself.
Each arrangement carries its own terms and timeline, but together they illustrate how deeply intertwined Alphabet and SpaceX have become across ownership, infrastructure and the broader AI computing race.
As SpaceX settles into life as a public company, investors will likely watch this dual investor-customer dynamic closely for signs of how far the relationship extends.
This image was generated using artificial intelligence via Gemini.
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