Elon Musk offers SpaceX employees 20% extra pay to build Memphis supercomputers
SpaceX is offering employees a 20% pay bump.
The short version
- They must move to Memphis for six weeks.
- Volunteers will help build massive data centers.
- Elon Musk leads the private rocket and satellite company.
- Travel expenses and logistics are fully covered.
Check your schedule if you work for Elon Musk, the billionaire who runs SpaceX, the private rocket and satellite company. SpaceX is offering employees a 20% pay increase to temporarily relocate and help build its massive data centers. According to an email seen by Business Insider, volunteers will spend six weeks on-site in Memphis, Tennessee, or Southaven, Mississippi.
The company is expanding its huge Colossus 1 and 2 data centers to meet surging demand for its compute business. Employees who volunteer must be in good performance standing, with more than one year of tenure preferred. They will receive a 20% premium on their base salary or hourly rate for the period, plus bonuses tied to program success.
SpaceX will cover all travel expenses and logistics. The supercomputers in Tennessee and Mississippi were originally built by xAI, the artificial intelligence startup founded by Elon Musk, before being folded into SpaceX. AI revenue that includes leasing out compute to other companies, including Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind Claude, and Google, has soared to more than $7 billion, making up nearly half of the rocket giant's quarterly revenue.
On a recent analyst call, Elon Musk said that SpaceX was being relentlessly hounded by companies looking to rent out its compute. The chief executive officer added that he is personally spending four days a week in Memphis, living in an Airstream trailer on the site, to push toward bringing an extra 10 gigawatts of compute online by the end of 2027. Packing your bags for a six-week stint in Tennessee just got a lot more rewarding.
