News

Elon Musk says SpaceX will cast its own turbine blades. Howmet (HWM) has over 50% of that market.

By Dennis Singleton · Markets Writer ·
Elon Musk says SpaceX will cast its own turbine blades. Howmet (HWM) has over 50% of that market.

Key points

  • Elon Musk said Saturday that SpaceX will cast gas turbine blades and vanes in-house, claiming it can pull new turbines forward by up to 18 months.
  • Howmet (HWM) says it holds more than 50% of the global market for those blades, and its gas turbine revenue rose 38% last quarter.
  • GE Vernova (GEV) signed 20 GW of gas-equipment contracts in Q2 while shipping 3 GW, an imbalance Musk says casting capacity can help address.

Elon Musk said Saturday that SpaceX will cast gas turbine blades and vanes at its own foundry, and that doing so can bring new natural gas turbines online up to 18 months sooner. "The limiting factor for nat gas turbine production is casting the blades & vanes," he wrote on X. "By doing in-house casting at SpaceX, we can accelerate nat gas turbines coming online by up to 18 months, which is a profound game-changer."

The post came in a reply about powering AI data centers, and it repeats a point Musk made in February on the Dwarkesh Podcast, where he said of turbine blades and vanes that "there are only three casting companies in the world that make these, and they're massively backlogged." He didn't name the three.

The Information has reported that SpaceX is laying groundwork for a turbine blade factory aimed at the data center power crunch, and SpaceX's careers page currently lists a Sr. Tooling Design Engineer, Investment Casting role in Bastrop, Texas. The listing covers the "design and development of wax injection molds and ceramic core injection molds used to produce turbine blades and vanes." Investment casting builds a metal part from a wax pattern inside a ceramic mold, and for turbine blades it has to hold tolerances on parts that run in gas hotter than the melting point of the alloy they are made from.

Blade casting appears to be one of the key choke points in a turbine market already booked years ahead. GE Vernova (GEV) signed 20 GW of gas-equipment contracts in the second quarter while shipping 3 GW, a widening demand-and-delivery imbalance that Musk says casting capacity can help address. We covered that gap in our piece on the turbine shortage. How fast that power arrives is one of the inputs behind our AI bubble index, which tracks how much of the announced data center pipeline becomes real capacity. GE Vernova closed Friday at $911.53, down 4.4%.

Advertisement

Who casts turbine blades today

Howmet Aerospace (HWM) is the one publicly traded pure play. Its second quarter revenue was $2.55 billion, up 24%, and its gas turbine revenue grew 38% from a year earlier, according to the company's results release. On the August 6 earnings call, the company said it has "a market share in excess of 50% globally for turbine blades in the IGT market." IGT stands for industrial gas turbine, the land-based machines that power plants run.

In the release, CEO John Plant said, "Demand in the gas turbines market is extraordinary with customers already revisiting and adding to their demand outlooks." On the call, the company said capital spending will likely top $500 million this year, with a further step up planned for 2027. The stock closed Friday at $264.83, down 1.1%, before Musk's post.

Precision Castparts, which Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) bought for $37.2 billion in 2016, also casts turbine airfoils. Privately held Chromalloy is the third name most often cited in the industry. The specialty alloys those foundries pour come from a short supplier list of their own, led by Carpenter Technology (CRS), which closed Friday at $476.33, down 2.9%, and ATI Inc (ATI), at $210.76, down 1.8%.

Musk's post also carried a solar claim: that SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA) are each building 100 GW per year of solar production capacity. Neither company has published plans supporting a figure that size, and Musk gave no timeline for it. Tesla closed Friday at $348.76, down 1.7%, and SpaceX, which would do the casting, isn't publicly traded.

The market gets its first chance to react Monday. For now the gas keeps its place in Musk's plan: "natural gas will still be needed to supplement and bootstrap solar for several years."

Market data via Robinhood, August 28, 2026 close. This article is for information only and is not investment advice.

Advertisement

Frequently asked questions

What did Elon Musk say about SpaceX and gas turbines?

In an August 29, 2026 post on X, Musk said the limiting factor for natural gas turbine production is casting the blades and vanes, and that in-house casting at SpaceX could accelerate new turbines coming online by up to 18 months.

Why are turbine blades a bottleneck for AI data centers?

New gas turbines are sold out years ahead, and the blades and vanes inside them are made by investment casting, a specialized process run by only a handful of companies. Howmet says gas turbine demand is extraordinary, and its gas turbine revenue rose 38% in the second quarter of 2026.

Which public companies cast turbine blades?

Howmet Aerospace (HWM) says it holds more than 50% of the global market for industrial gas turbine blades. Precision Castparts, owned by Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), also casts turbine airfoils, and Carpenter Technology (CRS) and ATI (ATI) supply the specialty alloys.

More on HWM and GEV

GE Vernova (GEV) is booking turbines years out. Data centers are buying Bloom Energy (BE) fuel cells instead.
Explainers

GE Vernova (GEV) is booking turbines years out. Data centers are buying Bloom Energy (BE) fuel cells instead.

Heavy-duty gas turbines are booked years out, so AI data centers are paying for onsite power instead. What GE Vernova, Bloom Energy, Power Solutions International, NRG and EQT each sell into that gap.

Aug 28, 2026
Four states now publish how much announced data center demand they actually expect. All four throw out most of it.
Explainers

Four states now publish how much announced data center demand they actually expect. All four throw out most of it.

Between December 2025 and August 2026, utilities and grid operators in four states each published their own count of how much announced data center demand they expect to serve. Seven filings, no shared method, and every one of them removes most of what it was asked for. None of the figures are new; the pattern across them is.

Aug 19, 2026
Pennsylvania will not permit a data center until the town says yes. The state has fully permitted five of more than 100 proposed projects.
News

Pennsylvania will not permit a data center until the town says yes. The state has fully permitted five of more than 100 proposed projects.

Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order on Aug. 18 barring Pennsylvania's DEP from issuing a data center permit before the project secures local approval. The state's own count puts more than 100 projects in public databases, 15 with permit applications filed, and five holding every permit needed for a first phase.

Aug 18, 2026
Dennis Singleton
Dennis Singleton · Markets Writer

Dennis Singleton has spent years following the markets, but what keeps his attention is how AI is built. He writes about the companies behind the technology, from semiconductor designers and advanced packaging to photonics, memory, networking, and the hardware powering modern AI. His approach starts with filings, earnings, and industry research, then translates the important details into clear, straightforward analysis without unnecessary hype.