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SpaceX is reportedly negotiating access to roughly 80,000 cell sites to support a new network, according to a report. Details on the identity of the tower owners, the network's purpose, and timing have not been disclosed.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense announced a letter of intent with Finland's Nokia and satellite maker ICEYE to build new defense and satellite communication capabilities, following disruptions to SpaceX's Starlink and Starshield services. President Zelenskyy also said Ukraine is pursuing a separate partnership with Norway on air defense and communications systems. Ukraine officials said Starlink restrictions, which disrupt connectivity for fast-moving drones and aircraft, were still in effect as of Friday.
Ukrainian officials say SpaceX has not lifted speed restrictions on its military-grade Starshield terminals, which cut connectivity for drones traveling faster than 100 mph. Deputy ambassador Denys Sienik and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy both said Friday that the throttling remains in place despite President Trump's earlier suggestion that service had been restored.
Starshield, the military version of SpaceX's Starlink used by Ukraine's army, was reportedly throttled last week to block terminals moving above certain speeds, which disabled interceptors used against Russian attack drones. Ukraine says it got no advance notice; President Zelenskyy has linked the move to tensions with the Trump administration, and the incident is tied to at least two deaths and 17 injuries. SpaceX, Elon Musk and the White House have given conflicting accounts of who ordered the restriction.
California Democratic Reps. Sam Liccardo, Ro Khanna and Jimmy Panetta sent a letter to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles calling for a government-wide investigation into a temporary restriction of SpaceX's Starshield service in Ukraine. The letter follows Wall Street Journal reporting that Elon Musk ordered the restrictions, which were later lifted after a call between Musk and President Trump.
Ukraine has depended heavily on SpaceX's Starlink for civilian communications and military drone operations throughout the war with Russia, with the US and European allies funding terminals and subscriptions. Recent unexplained service disruptions, reportedly tied to Elon Musk's political stances, have pushed Ukraine and European partners to examine alternatives to the network. A BlueBird Tech hardware engineer told Ars that Starlink remains unmatched in cost, availability and ease of use, though access to the US military-grade Starshield variant has also been extended to Ukraine's defense sector.
SpaceX is reportedly negotiating with Crown Castle, one of the largest US cell tower owners, to gain access to at least 80,000 sites, according to Bloomberg sources. That would cover roughly half of the nation's 158,500 operating cell towers, per Reuters. Crown Castle's CEO declined to confirm specifics but said the company is in talks with multiple parties.
SpaceX turned down three military launch contracts offered by the US Space Force, according to this week's Rocket Report roundup. Separately, a NASA safety panel said SpaceX's Starship may need up to 22 refueling flights to support a lunar landing mission.
Elon Musk told Tesla shareholders he had already said all he would on a possible SpaceX-Tesla merger, and Tesla's investor relations chief said executives would not address the topic. This follows Musk's comments a day earlier on SpaceX's earnings call, where he said both companies had formed special committees to explore a deal and that he personally favored it. Tesla's own results showed declining auto and energy revenue, with Tesla shares down 3% and SpaceX down 9% the day after Musk's remarks.
Elon Musk has said he will give every child in America a stake in SpaceX next year, a giveaway involving roughly 72 million shares worth about $10.5 billion at current prices. Divided among the country's children, that works out to roughly $146 per child. The pledge comes amid a broader trend of large philanthropic promises from Silicon Valley's wealthiest tech figures.
SpaceX disclosed in a quarterly SEC filing that its ownership stake in Elon Musk's Boring Co. generated a $561 million investment gain in the third quarter, making up more than half of SpaceX's other income for the period. The gain helped push SpaceX's net income to just over $4 billion. The filing also showed SpaceX spent $151 million on Tesla Megapack energy storage systems during the quarter.
Following OpenAI's September 3 release of GPT-6 Astra, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang posted on X that 'AGI has arrived,' while also touting 400,000 GPUs coming online. OpenAI itself has not used the term AGI for Astra, instead describing it as an 'operator' system that browses, codes and runs multi-step tasks, citing strong scores on benchmarks like FrontierMath Tier 4 and ARC-AGI-3. An AI engineer writing for Entrepreneur notes that Astra and rival Claude Fable 5.1 post near-identical benchmark scores yet behave very differently in practice, a gap attributed to the surrounding 'harness' rather than the underlying model.