FTC Approves Musk's Acquisition of SpaceX Alumni Startup Mesh
The Federal Trade Commission has expedited its antitrust review and cleared Elon Musk's company to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers.
Elon Musk is moving to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup developing optical hardware for high-speed data center communications. The potential acquisition came to light through a Federal Trade Commission filing, first reported by Bloomberg, confirming that the agency expedited its antitrust review.
Mesh Optical was founded by three former SpaceX engineers—Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli—who previously developed the optical communication links that keep thousands of SpaceX's Starlink satellites interconnected. The co-founders saw an opportunity to adapt that technology for terrestrial data centers, as light-based hardware is faster and more energy-efficient than traditional electrical-based systems.
The startup emerged from stealth in February 2026, announcing a $50 million Series A funding round led by Thrive Capital. Since then, the company has been working to commercialize its optical transceivers for data center use.
SpaceX has recently entered into agreements with AI companies Anthropic, Google, and 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.
