SpaceX proposed a 20% salary increase for data center employees
According to Business Insider, an internal email sent to all SpaceX employees in early October clearly stated: "We need managers, whether potential or already in this position, to lead teams and remove obstacles as we bring more supercomputers into operation."
Volunteer employees will have to spend 6 weeks working directly in Memphis, Tennessee or Southaven, Mississippi, where SpaceX is expanding two large-scale data centers Colossus 1 and 2 to meet business demand for increased computing power.
The email asks for volunteers "with a good work record", priority is given to those with more than one year of experience, construction experience is an advantage and "determination is most important". In addition, they will receive an allowance equivalent to 20% of their salary while on duty, and are eligible to receive "bonuses tied to the success of the program".
Bringing in employees from other departments to help build SpaceX's data center is described as a "boost". This is the strategy the company uses to redirect staff and resources to key projects.
According to another email obtained by Business Insider, SpaceX offered to pay "enhanced" employees 20% higher to move to Memphis from at least August. This email called for "SpaceX experts and talent" to participate in building the data center in three months, saying the program was expected to end on December 31, 2026 but could be extended. Both emails claim SpaceX will pay for travel and logistics costs.
SpaceX has not responded to comments.
According to CNBC, in 2022, SpaceX will apply a similar strategy when offering employees a 10-25% salary increase if they temporarily move to the Starbase facility, Texas, to prepare for the launch of the giant Starship rocket. The company also increased hourly wages for non-salary employees working at Starbase, and added performance bonuses for 2023.
Business Insider said that data centers in Tennessee and Mississippi play an important role in SpaceX's business operations. In its business results report on October 20, SpaceX said revenue from AI, including leasing computing power to other companies such as Anthropic and Google, soared to more than $7 billion, nearly half of SpaceX's total quarterly revenue.
During a meeting with analysts, CEO Elon Musk said SpaceX is being "relentlessly sought after" by companies wanting to rent computing capacity.
On October 20, Musk also told investors he was spending most of his time in Memphis, usually four days a week, to push SpaceX to reach its goal of increasing 10 GW of computing capacity before the end of 2027. Last month, he said he lived in a car to supervise the data center construction process.
According to Reuters, SpaceX's ambitions do not stop at ground data centers. Earlier this year, SpaceX announced a bold plan to ask for permission to launch one million satellites to deploy an AI data center in orbit. According to documents submitted to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the satellites will exploit solar energy to operate and process data for AI, thereby "supporting AI applications for billions of people and ensuring humanity's multi-planetary future".