It’s obviously a scam. First xai acquires failing Twitter and then SpaceX acquires xai? At a made up valuation number that’s too high? The voting structure of SpaceX prevents Elon from ever being held accountable. Not to mention that the revenue and profits are simply not enough to justify the desired value.
> The deal, with SpaceX, is that Elon Musk runs it however he wants, and he does weird stuff, and you have to trust him, and if you don’t like it you can’t complain.
> When SpaceX acquired xAI a few months ago, did a special committee of independent directors approve the transaction? Did Musk recuse himself from negotiations? Was the price set by independent valuation experts using a rigorous process? Did outside shareholders sue to block the deal? Stop. Musk wanted SpaceX to buy xAI, so it did.
> [...] Surely SpaceX has created all that shareholder value more because Musk does what he wants than in spite of Musk doing what he wants; it is hard to accidentally create $1.75 trillion of value. SpaceX’s shareholders signed up for this deal — letting Musk cook — and have been rewarded;
It's really concerning given how the indexes are changing rules to fast-track SpaceX being forced into index funds. S&P is also working on updates to S&P 500 to force it down everyone's throats quickly and algorithmically.
the piece explains how modern finance is de facto built on the shoulders of the privatization of the welfare state. i find it particularly relevant here: the finance class - in this case musk - wants pensioners money via mutual funds, even modifying the rules of indexing...
The part that gets me is that changing of the rules by exchanges and financial regulators to essentially force mass purchases on a small float. That's disgusting and in a just world, those people would go to jail.
The funny part of all this is that SpaceX has achieved a lot but what might break them, or at least weigh them down heavily, is the impulsive and forced purchase of Twitter. Before anyone claims it was some kind of master plan, Elon went to court to get out of it but was forced into it [1].
What happened? Mass firings, pushing his own tweets because his fragile ego couldn't handle Joe Biden getting more likes [2] and Twitter opened the floodgates for hate speech [3] and worse [4]. Advertisers fled. Fidelity (who foolishly was part of the acquisition) massively wrote down the value [5]. Elon had used Tesla shares as collateral and was possibly facing a margin call.
How did he get out of it? Well, in 2023 Elon founded xAI to challenge OpenAI. People invested in this for some reason. And by 2025, Elon merged Twitter with xAI, overvaluing Twitter at $33 billion (which is still down 25% from the purchase) [6].
Now, I imagine the xAI investors were unhappy with Elon using xAI to bail out himself so what did he do? Easy. Make SpaceX acquire xAI of course [7].
Thing is, xAI and Twitter/Grok are a massive drain on SpaceX's finances, losing more than $10 billion annually allegedly [8].
Twitter did not have to end up as part of SpaceX. SpaceX would've been a better company without it. SpaceX already faces headwinds from the incredibly expensive and behind-schedule Starship program. Part of all of this regulatory fixing is to make sure the insiders (and Elon himself) get bailed out.
Yeah, for all the technical excellence by Shotwell and the team ... I don't want my ETF's and pensions buying into that piece of shit CEO and his corrupt 'at a whim' entity manipulation.
That's a great start, now they need to add pretty much anything swept up in the AI Ponzi scheme that NVidia and others are running. The circular money flows are astounding once on see them. LLMs and "AI" is great, until you actually have to pay for it an an un-subsidized price. I'm working to do that locally, on a machine I control, for my own personal uses. (I'm old, and retired)
The whole market is running on fumes, most of the actual value of the physical economy has been extracted by the Epstein class. It will not be pretty when it implodes, and people have to actually make things for a living again. (I've worked in a job shop, making gears, I know what its like).
The criticism seems politically motivated. Considering what happened to Blue Origin, SpaceX's success is commendable. Although I agree $1.8T seems crazy.
I've recently been thinking about pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have. I really don't want my investments to be in SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic.
I really want a QQQ/VOO replacement that excludes these new rushed IPOs that are just exit liquidity. There are ETFs that exclude harmful industries like gambling, weapons and tobacco. How about an ETF that doesn't include IPOs for six months or until insider lock ups periods are over.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 74.0 ms ] thread> The deal, with SpaceX, is that Elon Musk runs it however he wants, and he does weird stuff, and you have to trust him, and if you don’t like it you can’t complain.
> When SpaceX acquired xAI a few months ago, did a special committee of independent directors approve the transaction? Did Musk recuse himself from negotiations? Was the price set by independent valuation experts using a rigorous process? Did outside shareholders sue to block the deal? Stop. Musk wanted SpaceX to buy xAI, so it did.
> [...] Surely SpaceX has created all that shareholder value more because Musk does what he wants than in spite of Musk doing what he wants; it is hard to accidentally create $1.75 trillion of value. SpaceX’s shareholders signed up for this deal — letting Musk cook — and have been rewarded;
the piece explains how modern finance is de facto built on the shoulders of the privatization of the welfare state. i find it particularly relevant here: the finance class - in this case musk - wants pensioners money via mutual funds, even modifying the rules of indexing...
it’s not a great sight tbh.
The funny part of all this is that SpaceX has achieved a lot but what might break them, or at least weigh them down heavily, is the impulsive and forced purchase of Twitter. Before anyone claims it was some kind of master plan, Elon went to court to get out of it but was forced into it [1].
What happened? Mass firings, pushing his own tweets because his fragile ego couldn't handle Joe Biden getting more likes [2] and Twitter opened the floodgates for hate speech [3] and worse [4]. Advertisers fled. Fidelity (who foolishly was part of the acquisition) massively wrote down the value [5]. Elon had used Tesla shares as collateral and was possibly facing a margin call.
How did he get out of it? Well, in 2023 Elon founded xAI to challenge OpenAI. People invested in this for some reason. And by 2025, Elon merged Twitter with xAI, overvaluing Twitter at $33 billion (which is still down 25% from the purchase) [6].
Now, I imagine the xAI investors were unhappy with Elon using xAI to bail out himself so what did he do? Easy. Make SpaceX acquire xAI of course [7].
Thing is, xAI and Twitter/Grok are a massive drain on SpaceX's finances, losing more than $10 billion annually allegedly [8].
Twitter did not have to end up as part of SpaceX. SpaceX would've been a better company without it. SpaceX already faces headwinds from the incredibly expensive and behind-schedule Starship program. Part of all of this regulatory fixing is to make sure the insiders (and Elon himself) get bailed out.
It's also not the first time [9].
[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/elon-musk-offers-to-end...
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk...
[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/technology/twitter-hate-s...
[4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/27/twitter...
[5]: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/29/fidelity-twitter-x-value-el...
[6]: https://www.fintechweekly.com/magazine/articles/xai-acquires...
[7]: https://www.reuters.com/business/musks-spacex-merge-with-xai...
[8]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/musk-s-xa...
[9]: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/21/13698314/tesla-complete...
Yeah, for all the technical excellence by Shotwell and the team ... I don't want my ETF's and pensions buying into that piece of shit CEO and his corrupt 'at a whim' entity manipulation.
Sorry, fuck SpaceX
The whole market is running on fumes, most of the actual value of the physical economy has been extracted by the Epstein class. It will not be pretty when it implodes, and people have to actually make things for a living again. (I've worked in a job shop, making gears, I know what its like).