A $329 million purchase order takes on new dimensions when buyer and seller share a CEO. SpaceX’s Q2 2026 earnings, filed with the SEC in early August, reveal that the rocket company dropped $295 million on Tesla Megapacks in a single quarter. Year-to-date: $329 million. That figure sits on top of roughly $1 billion in Megapack purchases by xAI — now merged into SpaceX — dating back to 2024, according to SpaceX’s amended S-1/A IPO filing. The numbers keep climbing, and the story behind them is more complicated than a supply chain update. The scale of investment reflects a broader trend fueled by projects like the Stargate Project, which has accelerated AI infrastructure spending across the industry.
The Battery Behind the AI Machine
Megapacks aren’t powering rockets — they’re keeping GPU clusters from melting down.
These batteries aren’t headed to launch pads. They’re going to AI data centers, where racks of Nvidia GPUs spike power demand like a stadium powering up at kickoff — sudden, intense, and unforgiving. Megapacks handle peak-shaving, absorbing sharp power surges to avoid crushing demand charges. They also deliver sub-second backup response and smooth the gap between constant-output gas turbines and wildly variable compute loads. At xAI’s Colossus facility in Mississippi — where reports surfaced of dozens of unpermitted natural gas turbines, according to TechCrunch — battery backup isn’t optional. It’s survival gear.
The critical figures tell the story quickly:
- SpaceX spent $295M on Megapacks in Q2 2026 alone; $329M year-to-date
- Tesla recognized $318M in Q2 2026 revenue and $405M in H1 2026 from SpaceX Megapack purchases, per Tesla’s Q2 2026 10-Q
- xAI’s total Megapack spend since 2024 reaches approximately $1 billion, spanning $191M in 2024, $506M in 2025, and $269M in April 2026 alone, per SpaceX’s S-1/A filing
- SpaceX also purchased $131M in Cybertrucks in 2025, according to Reuters
“AI data centers are becoming one of the fastest-growing segments for grid-scale battery storage,” according to industry analysts cited in OPIS energy market reporting.
One Wallet, Two Companies
Related-party transactions are a filing requirement — and in this case, the whole point.
Both Tesla’s 10-Q and SpaceX’s S-1/A explicitly flag these deals as “related-party transactions.” The generous interpretation: strategic vertical integration, like locking in your own supply chain before competitors realize the resource exists. The skeptical read: manufactured demand that pads Tesla Energy’s revenue line while raising questions about transfer pricing and capital allocation. Both readings hold weight simultaneously, and neither cancels the other out.
Here’s the scale worth noting. SpaceX’s total Q2 capex hit $18.4 billion. Of that, $15.8 billion went to AI compute, per the Q2 earnings call. Megapacks represent a fraction of that spend — which makes the trajectory more striking, not less. If this pace continues, Tesla Energy could be fielding multi-billion-dollar annual orders from Musk-linked AI infrastructure alone. Other hyperscalers are watching. The Megapack just became AI infrastructure’s default power-management system.
For anyone holding Tesla or SpaceX stock, the math looks favorable on paper. But when your largest energy storage customer shares your CEO’s name, “related-party transaction” isn’t a footnote buried in an SEC filing. It’s the sentence worth reading twice.
