SpaceX is putting its longstanding focus of sending humans to Mars on the back burner to prioritize establishing a settlement on the moon, founder Elon Musk said Sunday.

In Musk’s telling, the step beyond data centers orbiting Earth is even larger computers in deep space. And furthermore, Musk says the best way to achieve that is to build a city on the moon to manufacture space computers and hurl them into the solar system using a big maglev train.

Elon Musk’s ambition to one day settle Mars appears to have taken a back seat for a rather nearer and more achievable goal – sending humans to live on the moon.

Elon Musk has shifted SpaceX's near-term focus from Mars colonization to building a permanent lunar settlement, a major pivot from the company's

Elon Musk has tore xAI down and stitched it straight into SpaceX.That’s where we are now.The so-called “reorganization” of the AI startup has already pushed out a pile of key names. Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu,

Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has seen a wave of senior employees leave in recent days after he announced it would merge with the rocket company SpaceX.