SpaceX Competes For Autonomous Drone Swarms

Bloomberg reported on February 17, 2026 that SpaceX and its subsidiary xAI are among a select few competing in a secret Pentagon $100 million prize challenge launched in January to develop voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming technology. The six-month competition aims to translate spoken commands into digital instructions to coordinate multiple drones, and comes as the Pentagon pushes faster domestic drone development.