February 2, 2026 News
SpaceX Acquires xAI to Build Space-Based AI Data Centers
SpaceX has acquired Elon Musk's AI startup xAI, creating a combined company valued at $1.25 trillion with plans to build data centers in space. The merger aims to address AI's massive electricity demands by moving computational infrastructure to orbit, requiring continuous satellite launches that will provide SpaceX with sustained revenue. The deal combines xAI's current $1 billion monthly burn rate with SpaceX's satellite-dependent business model, though concerns exist about both companies' near-term objectives and xAI's content safety issues.
Skynet Chance (+0.04%): Moving AI infrastructure to space could reduce oversight and regulatory control while enabling massive scaling of AI compute capabilities beyond terrestrial constraints. The loosening of safety restrictions on Grok chatbot demonstrates concerning prioritization of capability development over safety controls.
Skynet Date (-1 days): Space-based data centers could accelerate AI development by removing power and cooling constraints, though the infrastructure buildout will take years. The immediate effect is modest acceleration through better resource access for advanced AI training.
AGI Progress (+0.03%): The merger creates infrastructure for dramatically scaling AI compute beyond current terrestrial limitations, directly addressing a key bottleneck to AGI development. Removing power constraints could enable significantly larger training runs and more capable models.
AGI Date (-1 days): While space-based infrastructure will take time to deploy, the commitment of SpaceX's resources and the removal of electricity constraints as a limiting factor could meaningfully accelerate the timeline to AGI. The massive valuation and financial backing suggest serious momentum toward this capability expansion.
OpenAI Releases MacOS Codex App with Multi-Agent Coding Capabilities
OpenAI has launched a new MacOS application for its Codex coding tool, incorporating agentic workflows that allow multiple AI agents to work independently on programming tasks in parallel. The app features background automations, customizable agent personalities, and leverages the GPT-5.2-Codex model, though benchmarks show it performs similarly to competing models from Gemini 3 and Claude Opus. CEO Sam Altman claims the tool enables sophisticated software development in hours, limited only by how fast users can input ideas.
Skynet Chance (+0.04%): Multi-agent systems working autonomously on complex tasks with minimal human oversight represent incremental progress toward AI systems that operate independently with less human control. However, this is contained within a specific domain (coding) with human review mechanisms, limiting immediate existential risk escalation.
Skynet Date (-1 days): The acceleration of autonomous AI agent capabilities and their integration into production workflows modestly speeds the timeline toward more capable autonomous systems. The competitive pressure between labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) to deploy increasingly agentic systems suggests faster iteration cycles.
AGI Progress (+0.03%): The advancement represents meaningful progress in AI autonomy and multi-agent coordination, key capabilities required for AGI. The ability to handle complex, multi-step tasks independently across specialized subagents demonstrates improved reasoning and task decomposition.
AGI Date (-1 days): The rapid commercialization of sophisticated agentic systems and competitive deployment by major labs (within two months of GPT-5.2 launch) indicates an accelerating pace of capability development and deployment. The shift from simple tools to autonomous agents working in parallel suggests faster progress toward general-purpose AI systems.