loading . . . Why is SpaceX going public? | The Verge > Interessante opinione, da leggere tutto su The Verge (grassetti miei)
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> In 2013, Musk sent an email to SpaceX, which his biographer Ashlee Vance reprinted in his book, saying he didn’t want to take the company public until his Mars transport system is in place. Tesla went public because it “didn’t have any choice,” Musk wrote in a memo to SpaceX employees in 2013. “I am hesitant to foist being public on SpaceX, especially given the long term nature of our mission.”
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> An IPO can raise a lot of money for a company while letting longtime investors exit. But there’s a price. It’s possible the private market has overvalued the company or the financials don’t look as good as everyone hoped. And it’s much easier for investors to bail on a public company than a private one.
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> There are other things Musk cited in his 2013 memo, too. “Public companies are judged on quarterly performance,” he wrote. If SpaceX had a bad quarter as a public company, “short sellers would be hitting us over the head with a large stick.” The stock also would get beaten up every time something went wrong with a SpaceX rocket. (In non-Trump administrations, public companies are also scrutinized more closely by financial regulators than private ones — though Trump’s SEC seems to exist largely to get rid of old SEC cases.)
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> Tesla has an inflated share price because of Musk’s fandom, which effectively precludes activists from taking over the board and ejecting its CEO; also, it is a mess. …
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> Well, Musk loves saying weird shit he won’t follow through on. Take, for instance, the part of the 2013 memo about SpaceX not going public until the Mars transport system is in place. It isn’t. In fact, Musk recast his Mars ambitions to the Moon, **perhaps because he recently discovered the Moon is the celestial body actually shown on his “Occupy Mars” shirt.**
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> **Data centers in space are the purported reason for acquiring xAI** , Musk’s tremendously money-losing home of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter and its boutique child porn generator Grok. **Maybe adding X and xAI to SpaceX will “make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!** ”
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> Musk has a history of buying companies that Elon Musk is the largest investor in; take Tesla’s 2016 Solar City acquisition. A number of Tesla investors sued, saying that the acquisition amounted to a bailout of the failing solar panel company — one meant to prop up Musk’s investment. Those investors ultimately lost the suit. But it does raise my eyebrows about the xAI acquisition of X, and the SpaceX acquisition of xAI.
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> I’m not sure about SpaceX’s overall cost basis but**I know xAI is lighting money on fire**
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> **First, Musk needs to help out the investors in his debt-loaded Twitter takeover, which was notoriously overvalued even before it closed and became the worst merger for its banks since the financial crisis, until the Trump administration reversed their fortunes**. So I don’t think it’s too far-fetched that Musk is now trying to pay off his equity investors. Smushing X into xAI gave those investors a slice of the more valuable company as a thank-you for their trouble. And, in turn, rolling the money-losing xAI into SpaceX gives them an even bigger return on their investment, with the IPO poised to give them an opportunity to sell, realize their profits, and put the whole thing behind them.
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> **Second, Musk wants to go to market before Sam Altman does.** Do I need to recap this entire stupid slapfest for you? (I am about to drag my ass to an Oakland courtroom to watch them bicker expensively at the end of April). Honestly, rich people should have better hobbies, like building spectacular architecture that will outlast their miserable families.
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> **And third, it’s reasonable to conclude that SpaceX needs money**. That’s what forced Musk’s hand into going public with Tesla, after all. Now, you may be suggesting that Musk really needs those funds for his data centers in space, in which case, I’d advise you to continue waiting for the Hyperloop to get built. I don’t think that’s the issue. I’m not sure about SpaceX’s overall cost basis but I know xAI is lighting money on fire.
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> **Starship doesn’t just matter for Starlink; it also matters for NASA and other contracts.** There should be a test flight of Starship in the next “four to six weeks,” according to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell. SpaceX estimates Starship will be ready to launch a new constellation of Starlink satellites in “mid-2027,” said Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s senior vice president said at Mobile World Congress.
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> **Still, despite the risks, there’s reason to think that SpaceX has some real possibility for rewards. I bring all this up because SpaceX is the good part of the business. xAI, meanwhile, burned through almost $10 billion in cash in the first nine months of last year to achieve… $210 million in revenue.** This is to say nothing of the $17.5 billion in debt (which may incur penalties if it is paid back early), the fun new regulatory risks, and the lawsuits that xAI also tacks on to SpaceX. Maybe xAI is Musk’s version of a poison pill to keep activist investors away, who knows!
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> Whether the IPO will be successful is an open question. Separately from any doubts investors may have about SpaceX’s finances, Musk has alienated a lot of people over the last two years through his political ventures — doubtless another reason to target index funds, which are a basket of investments designed to mirror a benchmark such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the Nasdaq — and investors’ moods may sour on AI. But there’s one other factor working against the IPO: Musk’s ego.
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> Whatever number SpaceX actually needs is going to be large, but whatever Musk is going to want will be larger
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> Consider for a moment Musk’s megalomania. What numbers do you suppose Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorganChase, and Morgan Stanley gave Musk on SpaceX? Whatever number SpaceX actually needs is going to be large, but whatever Musk is going to want will be larger. Will it make sense?
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> Maybe, and maybe SpaceX’s finances will be great, and I will write something about how surprisingly normal and sensible the SpaceX S-1 is, and we will all move on with our lives. But given all the agita around the extremely overvalued Twitter acquisition, Musk’s “first buddy” status, the Starship explosions, and the AI bubble fears, plus whatever the fuck the Iran action does to energy markets, Musk may have seen the future back in his 2013 memo. To borrow a phrase, SpaceX may soon be getting hit with very large sticks
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> Source: _Why is SpaceX going public? | The Verge_
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