FTC gives Musk the OK to acquire SpaceX alumni startup Mesh

美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）批准马斯克收购 SpaceX 前员工创办的初创公司 Mesh

Elon Musk is eyeing an acquisition of Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers last year developing hardware for fast data center communications. The potential acquisition, which was revealed in a Federal Trade Commission filing and first reported by Bloomberg, confirmed the agency expedited its antitrust review.

埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）正计划收购 Mesh Optical Technologies。这是一家由三名前 SpaceX 工程师于去年创立的初创公司，致力于开发用于高速数据中心通信的硬件。此次潜在收购案在联邦贸易委员会（FTC）的一份文件中被披露，并由彭博社率先报道，证实了该机构已加快了对其反垄断审查的进度。

Mesh Optical came out of stealth in February when it announced that it raised a $50 million Series A led by Thrive Capital. Before founding Mesh Optical, the startup’s co-founders, Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli, developed the optical communication links that keep thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites interconnected.

Mesh Optical 于今年 2 月结束隐身状态，宣布完成了由 Thrive Capital 领投的 5000 万美元 A 轮融资。在创立 Mesh Optical 之前，该公司的联合创始人 Travis Brashears、Cameron Ramos 和 Serena Grown-Haeberli 曾负责开发用于维持 SpaceX 数千颗星链（Starlink）卫星互联的光通信链路。

The Mesh co-founders saw an opportunity to develop optical transceivers for terrestrial data centers, as light-based hardware is faster and more energy-efficient than traditional electrical-based systems.

Mesh 的联合创始人看到了为地面数据中心开发光收发器的商机，因为基于光学的硬件比传统的电学系统速度更快、能效更高。

SpaceX has recently entered into agreements with Anthropic, Google, and the open-source AI developer Reflection AI to provide them with compute capacity at its data centers, generating a substantial new revenue stream for the newly public company. Acquiring Mesh could eventually allow SpaceX to improve the efficiency of its data centers, whether they are located on Earth or, in the future, in space.

SpaceX 最近已与 Anthropic、谷歌以及开源 AI 开发商 Reflection AI 达成协议，为其提供数据中心计算能力，这为这家刚上市不久的公司创造了可观的新收入来源。收购 Mesh 最终可能使 SpaceX 能够提升其数据中心的效率，无论这些数据中心是位于地球上，还是在未来部署于太空之中。