Musk: SpaceX writes its own headers and timekeeping system; Grok's new training and inference stack comes from Starlink engineering
Elon Musk posted on X on November 10 that SpaceX writes its own network headers and calculates its own time, including leap seconds. He said that those who understand this approach will understand what it means.
Later the same day, Musk added that the new Grok AI/SI training and inference stack comes from the work of Starlink engineers, and said that it includes some assembly code. He said the code is relatively compact, and that a future superintelligence might write a better software stack, but that has not yet been achieved.
The above are Musk's personal statements; he did not provide specific code scale, performance data, or comparison details with existing frameworks.
Original source:
Title: At SpaceX, we write our own headers and calculate our own time (includes leap seconds). Publisher: Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Publication date: 2026-11-10 URL: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2120098904838697466 Source type: X original post Verification status: Read Musk's two consecutive original posts and confirmed SpaceX's self-developed headers and timekeeping, the Grok stack's origin in the Starlink team, the inclusion of assembly code, and the statement that it is
ABAB AI Insight
Musk emphasized in his posts that SpaceX takes a self-developed approach to network protocols and time systems, including writing its own headers and handling leap seconds. This approach is typically used in systems that have high requirements for latency, synchronization accuracy, or special environments such as satellite communications.
He also said that Grok's current training and inference software stack comes from the work of the Starlink team, and mentioned that it includes assembly code, describing it as "tight code." Previously, Musk had said that xAI's pretraining software was developed mainly in C/C++ by the Starlink software team.
The posts did not disclose the stack's specific performance metrics, comparisons with third-party frameworks, or the detailed path by which Starlink engineering experience was transferred to AI training. Musk said that superintelligence may one day write a better software stack, but that it has not yet reached that stage. These statements are all his personal evaluations, and there are currently no public benchmark tests or third-party code reviews to verify them.