Hacker News

Seems like a weird article though, with some inaccuracy in key data:

> The company is in fact relatively small and losing money.

Whereas it's widely reported to be profitable:

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/spacex-generated-ab...

(many reports of that same info around)

The article also contradicts itself later on:

> SpaceX’s rocket-launch and satellite-internet businesses are enormously profitable near-monopolies.

Was this article just AI generated spam? :(

The article states right up front that they’re not profitable because of xAI’s costs.

So there’s nothing contradictory about it.

In the second paragraph:

> SpaceX’s annual revenue last year was less than $20 billion, and it lost nearly $5 billion, according to a new report from The Information, mostly because of xAI’s huge capital costs.

That's right. SpaceX is likely a great business on its fundamentals, and starlink is probably even better. The meme-stock part of this is that they've swept all these different business up together. I would've loved the opportunity to invest in SpaceX and starlink, but I'm not convinced the AI and other parts of the business are anything other than a landfill fire. The orbital datacentre concept is just plain nutty and in a different way than most of Elon's major undertakings. Sweeping them all in together like this just creates a serious risk that the best space company in the world will go under when the AI bubble bursts.

They are likely including xAI and the massive training costs that entails in order to make it sound like all their ventures are losing money.

In fact lumping xAI in that to cause a loss likely provides some tax benefits vs putting it with Twitter/X itself

The Atlantic aligns politically with people who do not align politically with Musk. It’s just red meat for their readers.

There's a reason why he's trying to reserve 30% of the IPO for retail investors.

please elaborate

Bagholders

Doesn't seem right as plenty of institutionals get cooked.

He claims loyalty with long-term holders who trust him (read:less nagging and more license). I suspect it's also more convenient for his IR team to avoid worthless meetings with super shareholders.

There are ~7 born per minute. 95% of them are retail investors.

If you want actual reason, it's because he uses it as a money battery, i.e. funding xAI and SPACE DATA CENTERS.