The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has approved Musk to acquire the startup SpaceX’s alumni network

Elon Musk is looking to acquire Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers last year to develop hardware for fast data center communications.

The potential acquisition, which was disclosed in a Federal Trade Commission filing And the first Reported by BloombergThe agency confirmed the acceleration of the antitrust review.

Mesh Optical came out stealthily in February when it announced it had raised a sum $50 million Series A Led by Thrive Capital.

Before founding Mesh Optical, the startup’s co-founders, Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Graun-Hipperly, developed the optical communications links that keep thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites connected.

Mesh’s founders saw an opportunity to develop optical transceivers for terrestrial data centers, as light-based devices are faster and more energy efficient than traditional electricity-based systems.

SpaceX recently entered into agreements with Anthropic, Google, and open source artificial intelligence developer Reflection AI to provide them with computing power in its data centers, generating a significant 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 space in the future.