SpaceX is offering its employees a pay raise to temporarily move to Memphis and help build its data centers.
Elon Musk’s rocket company is offering its employees a 20% pay raise if they volunteer to spend six weeks helping build its supercomputer, according to an email viewed by Business Insider.
“We now need leaders – current and emerging – to guide teams and remove blockers as we bring more supercomputers online,” reads the email sent in early October to all SpaceX employees.
He says volunteers don’t need to already be managers, adding that construction experience is a plus and that “dynamism matters most.”
Employees who show up should expect to spend six weeks on-site in Memphis, Tennessee, or Southaven, Mississippi, where SpaceX is currently expanding its massive Colossus 1 and 2 data centers to meet growing demand for its computing business.
Volunteers “must be a good performer,” with a tenure of more than one year preferably, the email states. Employees who volunteer will receive a 20% bonus on their base salary or hourly rate for the duration of their assignment and will be eligible for “program success bonuses.”
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
The email describes the reassignment of employees from other parts of SpaceX to help build the company’s data center as a “surge,” a tactic employed by the company to divert employees and resources to critical projects.
In 2022, CNBC reported that SpaceX offered its employees pay raises of between 10 and 25% to temporarily relocate to Texas as it attempted to launch its Starship megarocket.
The company has been offering “thriving” employees a 20% bonus on their salary to move to Memphis since at least August, according to another email seen by Business Insider that called for “SpaceX experts and aces” to work for the next three months on data center construction. The email states that the program is scheduled to end on December 31, 2026, but could be extended.
SpaceX will cover travel costs and logistics, both emails state.
SpaceX’s IT cash cow
The supercomputers in Tennessee and Mississippi, initially built by xAI before the startup became part of SpaceX in February, have become a critical part of the company’s operations.
In SpaceX’s earnings Tuesday evening, the rocket giant said AI revenue, which includes leasing its computations to other companies including Anthropic and Google, had soared to more than $7 billion, or nearly half of SpaceX’s total quarterly revenue.
On the analysts’ call, CEO Elon Musk said SpaceX was being “relentlessly hounded” by companies looking to rent its computer, adding that they could have rented it multiple times.
SpaceX has replaced its executives as well as its core employees to oversee its aggressive expansion. Business Insider previously reported that the company had put a former Starship executive in charge of growing its computing capacity in Memphis.
Musk told investors Tuesday that he also spends most of his time in the city as he seeks to push SpaceX toward its goal of bringing an additional 10 gigawatts of computing online by the end of 2027.
“Personally, I spend a lot of my time in Memphis, often four days a week,” the SpaceX CEO said. He previously said he lived in an Airstream trailer at the site.
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