SpaceX puts a Starship veteran in charge of its Memphis data centers

• SpaceX has put Starship executive Kevin Holland in charge of its Memphis data centers, according to a memo seen by BI.
• Holland will be tasked with bringing six new phases of compute online by the end of the year.
• Elon Musk has been staying in Memphis in an Airstream trailer as SpaceX expands its lucrative AI infrastructure.

SpaceX is turning to a Starship executive to head up its massive Memphis data center operations.

Elon Musk's AI and rocket company has placed Kevin Holland, a veteran of SpaceX's launch business, in charge of building out its AI compute infrastructure, according to a memo viewed by Business Insider.

The early September memo from xAI president Michael Nicolls said that Holland would be tasked with "bringing up the next 6 phases of compute by end of year."

Holland's LinkedIn profile says he started a new role as "VP, Supercompute," based in Memphis, in August.

The longtime SpaceX employee, who has worked at the company across two spells since 2013, was previously a senior director at SpaceX's launch site in Cape Canaveral, working on Starship.

The memo said Wesley Salandro and Alexandra Noe, two other senior executives from SpaceX's Falcon rocket and Starlink satellite internet divisions, would report directly to Holland.

The Information previously reported that Salandro had taken over leadership of SpaceX's data centers from Dan Rowland, a former Tesla engineer. Rowland took on the role before xAI was merged with SpaceX earlier this year, with the company becoming "SpaceXAI" in July. Holland and Noe's roles have not previously been reported.

SpaceX and Holland did not respond to a request for comment, sent outside normal working hours.

SpaceX cashes in on compute

SpaceX operates two massive "Colossus" AI supercomputing clusters in Memphis, Tennessee, and just across the state border in Southaven, Mississippi.

The huge data centers, which are among the largest in the world, are critical to SpaceX's business. In addition to training and running the company's Grok AI model, SpaceX has turned them into a lucrative revenue stream by renting out excess Nvidia GPUs to compute-strapped rivals like Anthropic and Google.

Filings for SpaceX's record-breaking public listing in June revealed that Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.25 billion a month to use the Colussus sites to meet growing demand for its AI models.

Google, a major investor in SpaceX, said in a June filing that it would pay SpaceX $920 million per month for compute capacity.

Those massive deals helped SpaceX more than triple its AI revenue in the second quarter, with Musk telling employees last month that AI would likely outpace all other revenue sources by September.

The elevation of three rocket and Starlink executives to oversee the company's Memphis data centers, which were originally built by xAI, is a sign of how entangled the two companies have become since they merged in February.

Business Insider previously reported that Nicolls, the senior vice president of Starlink at SpaceX, had taken on the title of xAI president in April as part of a broad reorganization of the AI startup, which had seen significant upheaval and the departures of all its remaining cofounders in the months prior.

The Information previously reported that multiple leaders of xAI's data center team have departed over the past year, with the division seeing an influx of executives from SpaceX's launch and connectivity organizations.

The organizational reshuffle comes as SpaceX races to expand its Memphis operation.

Musk has confirmed the company is building a third data center near the Colossus sites, dubbed "Minihard."

The billionaire, who is living in an Airstream trailer in Memphis while overseeing the buildout, posted on X last week that SpaceX aims to bring another 220,000 Nvidia AI chips online this week.

The company could add a further 220,000 by late December, Musk added, "if we get lucky."

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