Samuel Boivin | Nurphoto | Getty Images
SpaceX said on Friday that longtime Google executive Donald Harrison has resigned from the rocket maker’s board of directors.
Harrison has worked at Google since 2005, and is the search giant’s president of global partnerships and corporate development. In a regulatory filing, SpaceX said “Mr. Harrison’s decision to resign was not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to its operations, policies, or practices.”
SpaceX thanked Harrison for his “many contributions and his years of dedicated and outstanding service” to the company.
The announcement comes roughly five months after SpaceX went public in the largest IPO on record. Google parent Alphabet maintains close ties with SpaceX, having invested in Elon Musk’s company in 2015, when it was valued at about $12 billion.
Alphabet is now the largest institutional investor n SpaceX, with a stake worth $74 billion as of Friday’s close. SpaceX’s current market cap is about $1.8 trillion.
Google is a key customer of SpaceX, and has agreed to pay the company’s AI division up to $920 million a month for compute capacity from its data centers in the area around Memphis, Tennessee. The companies also recently worked together to launch Google AI chips into orbit via Project Suncatcher.
“While Don is stepping down from the board, we remain deeply supportive of SpaceX’s mission and are excited to continue our long-standing partnership,” Google said in an emailed statement.
