You never know what inflation gonna be in futute. In some countries that turned into autocracies with strong and long standing leaders who love traditional values and religion inflation can easily be 30-70% a year.
> Donald Trump said “I love the inflation” after new data showed that inflation jumped to an annual rate of 4.2% in May, the third consecutive monthly increase since the start of the Iran war and a three-year high.
If all the AI / robotics dreams come true and productivity increases a lot, it'll cause deflationary pressure, which must be balanced with money printing to keep inflation up at 2%. Increased productivity is never allowed to result in cheaper products. For example, CPI deflation 20% -> money printing 22% equals 2% total CPI inflation. Asset prices track the real inflation i.e. they rise by 22%.
I know this sounds "bad" but early in Tesla's forcasts, I've seen many "highly unlikely" articles, but Tesla ended up blowing past expectations. This one is tough too, but I hate just dismiss it as unlikely especially with Elon at the helm
Those things were highly unlikely because they accounted for rationality from the consumer's end as well as the political's end and of course Fed and regulators
All 3 went out of the window sometimes around 2015 or so.
It was only a few years ago people were saying Tesla was going to own the entire car market, and everyone else would go out of business. The Cybertruck was going to be the best selling car of all time, the insurance business was going to be a massive money maker etc.
I plan to stay the fuck away from it either way, but he's at least someone who's not only good at this stuff, showing their work and approaching it professionally.
I haven't had time to watch the video, but I read through part of the blog post, and seems he believes 1.2T is possible,but I won't know how much I agree with that until I finish reading/watching it all.
It's at, the very least, a professional presentation so it's a hell of a lot easier to see why and what he does/doesn't agree with.
Tesla spent almost years scraping by, almost went bankrupt in 2018, had three years of "exceeds expectation" from 2020 to 2023 and is now being murdered by competitors.
A lot of "income" comes from selling regulatory credits, not cars.
FSD is up to v14 and there is no sense in which it's "Full", or is likely to be "Full" any time soon.
The early computer industry created a good few companies which achieved profitability quickly and posted solid YoY expansion for decades.
The histories of SpaceX and Tesla show no evidence of that pattern.
I think the US is in such a fucked up place economically, that the stock market is so overheated and will cause grave inflation, but it's the only lever left to pull for the government, that it will cause havoc within the next 10 years.
SpaceX or any of AI companies for that matter is absolutely not worth their money, but they will be carried through by government legislation, because otherwise the economy will be fucked for the US.
SpaceX ... 4.3 trillion...what the fuck are you on about
The US consumer cellular subscription service is around 185 billion a year and if you add business/enterprise it is around 225 billion a year. If they were able (highly unlikely) to capture that market in the US alone through Satellite Cellular service, it would be huge revenue stream. Setting up data centers in orbit (easier said than done) would be another huge revenue stream. Setting up facilities to beam down energy to earths surface could also be an opportunity.
If I learned a good lesson, it's never say never....
Another factor I don't see mentioned: every Trump policy is inflationary. Deporting the labor base, deterring legal immigration, applying tariffs that were basically derived by taking the trade deficit with a country and dividing by 2, and now locking up 20% of the global oil market by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.
The Fed's response will have to be to raise rates, which is going to crush the multiple of any stock whose valuation is based on the expectation of massive growth.
I don't think some people understand how money works. If you say you're going to have $3.4T in revenue, someone has to have that money, and give it to you. So where is the money? Who has it? Are they spending it somewhere else right now, and will decide to instead spend it on SpaceX later? Or is the money just sitting in savings accounts, strangely not being spent or invested?
And why would they put their money into SpaceX anyway? What has SpaceX said the $3.4T will be based on?
1. Space-based AI datacenters. Yes, they actually said that. Anyone who knows anything about space and datacenters knows this is insane.
2. Starlink. They're saying they're going to make $3.4T by... running an ISP. In space.
3. Starship. They are betting that so many people want to send junk into space that it'll make them $3.4T.
4. Possible Tesla merger. This would definitely bump up the numbers. But Tesla's future depends on cars, AI and robotics. The US's electric car market is in decline (Thanks, Trump!) and BYD is producing cheaper electric cars faster (though US buyers won't buy BYD's, the US electric car market isn't as big as the global market, and is smaller since removing tax rebates). It's clearly not a real AI competitor, if they just rented out their AI datacenters to the competition. And China is churning out robots constantly that actually work and are cheap.
As you can see from other analyses (https://fortune.com/2026/05/31/spacex-tesla-odds-of-merging-...), their cash flow is actually much lower than they claim. The valuations are crazily high. SpaceX/Tesla's claims of how they're going to make money verges on snake oil.
It's funny it concludes "A line is not a law" while the entire page is just lines and charts. If you didn't know anything going in, SpaceX might as well be a company selling toilet paper for all you learned.
I've got no idea what a share of SpaceX is worth today or 14 years from now, but fully reusable rockets are going to be one of the most important engineering achievements in human history, and SpaceX appears far in the lead to getting there first. Ignoring everything else they're at the cutting edge of.
It's really just sad to me how upset how many people are about an IPO. "Imagine what a waste, if the stock market were to overvalue the company dedicated to solving the challenges required to make humanity a multi-planetary species, when this graph clearly shows we could've wisely allocated more of civilization's resources to Saudi Aramco."
The animated graphics are fancy, but can anyone with a screen reader tell us how that "looks" to them? The graphics are all one SVG mixed together with different parts set to opacity: 0. The accessibility tree in Firefox gives you all the labels randomly mixed together. If that is how people with screen reader "see" it, its unusable.
Maybe make the graphic aria-hidden and add an empty tag with aria-description (or other kind of tag only screen readers see) describing the current graphic to each slide.
It's insane to me that regulators are just letting the forced bid hack unfold with their heads in the sand as if they are unaware of what's happening or the press it's receiving.
Sometimes there are clever ways to hack the system and the regulators can react and blame poor hindsight, that's not the case here.
The chance of US debasing currency to dig out of debt hole by brrrrting money printer is not zero.
But 15 years is also plenty of time for PRC to establish reusable and lithography to invalidate SpaceX valuation rational by driving terrestrial dc and launch to commodity prices. It's like EVs, anything PRC decides to prioritize industrially, competitors going to have a bad time, but still doesn't stop market for valuating Tesla more than all PRC auto producers combined.
Would not be out of question for finance bros to figure out how to continue decoupling valuation from reality if that keeps system going.
46 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 60.9 ms ] threadThen not only 4.3T reachable, but even 43T.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/10/inflation-r...
You may be on to something...
adding a mode on this that prevents animations would be nice addition tho
"Why SpaceX's 2040 Revenue Forecast of $4.3T is highly unlikely"
The logic is super sane: rich people get richer. rich people in power let other rich people get richer.
The insane part is the population that falls for the lies and votes for this
The HN title editorializes its own answer to the author's question.
I'd have preferred the essay. This kind of Claude Code landing page turns people off when the content is otherwise meaningful.
The target audience will be looking for any reason to excuse this logic, and by vibe coding them a website you've given them their reason.
All 3 went out of the window sometimes around 2015 or so.
It was only a few years ago people were saying Tesla was going to own the entire car market, and everyone else would go out of business. The Cybertruck was going to be the best selling car of all time, the insurance business was going to be a massive money maker etc.
None of these things happened.
I plan to stay the fuck away from it either way, but he's at least someone who's not only good at this stuff, showing their work and approaching it professionally.
I haven't had time to watch the video, but I read through part of the blog post, and seems he believes 1.2T is possible,but I won't know how much I agree with that until I finish reading/watching it all.
It's at, the very least, a professional presentation so it's a hell of a lot easier to see why and what he does/doesn't agree with.
A lot of "income" comes from selling regulatory credits, not cars.
FSD is up to v14 and there is no sense in which it's "Full", or is likely to be "Full" any time soon.
The early computer industry created a good few companies which achieved profitability quickly and posted solid YoY expansion for decades.
The histories of SpaceX and Tesla show no evidence of that pattern.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
Tesla's recent annual car sales:
2023: 1.81M
2024: 1.79M
2025: 1.64M
Elon's failed timeline predictions about self-driving and Robotaxi fleets are too numerous to attempt to cite here.
What has mostly exceeded expectations about Tesla is their stock price compared to actual productivity.
SpaceX or any of AI companies for that matter is absolutely not worth their money, but they will be carried through by government legislation, because otherwise the economy will be fucked for the US.
SpaceX ... 4.3 trillion...what the fuck are you on about
(out of 22,000 employees)
Because many of them are going to sell sell sell at least half of their shares
Which then means the value will PLUMMET
If I learned a good lesson, it's never say never....
The Fed's response will have to be to raise rates, which is going to crush the multiple of any stock whose valuation is based on the expectation of massive growth.
And why would they put their money into SpaceX anyway? What has SpaceX said the $3.4T will be based on?
1. Space-based AI datacenters. Yes, they actually said that. Anyone who knows anything about space and datacenters knows this is insane.
2. Starlink. They're saying they're going to make $3.4T by... running an ISP. In space.
3. Starship. They are betting that so many people want to send junk into space that it'll make them $3.4T.
4. Possible Tesla merger. This would definitely bump up the numbers. But Tesla's future depends on cars, AI and robotics. The US's electric car market is in decline (Thanks, Trump!) and BYD is producing cheaper electric cars faster (though US buyers won't buy BYD's, the US electric car market isn't as big as the global market, and is smaller since removing tax rebates). It's clearly not a real AI competitor, if they just rented out their AI datacenters to the competition. And China is churning out robots constantly that actually work and are cheap.
As you can see from other analyses (https://fortune.com/2026/05/31/spacex-tesla-odds-of-merging-...), their cash flow is actually much lower than they claim. The valuations are crazily high. SpaceX/Tesla's claims of how they're going to make money verges on snake oil.
I've got no idea what a share of SpaceX is worth today or 14 years from now, but fully reusable rockets are going to be one of the most important engineering achievements in human history, and SpaceX appears far in the lead to getting there first. Ignoring everything else they're at the cutting edge of.
It's really just sad to me how upset how many people are about an IPO. "Imagine what a waste, if the stock market were to overvalue the company dedicated to solving the challenges required to make humanity a multi-planetary species, when this graph clearly shows we could've wisely allocated more of civilization's resources to Saudi Aramco."
Maybe make the graphic aria-hidden and add an empty tag with aria-description (or other kind of tag only screen readers see) describing the current graphic to each slide.
Sometimes there are clever ways to hack the system and the regulators can react and blame poor hindsight, that's not the case here.
But 15 years is also plenty of time for PRC to establish reusable and lithography to invalidate SpaceX valuation rational by driving terrestrial dc and launch to commodity prices. It's like EVs, anything PRC decides to prioritize industrially, competitors going to have a bad time, but still doesn't stop market for valuating Tesla more than all PRC auto producers combined.
Would not be out of question for finance bros to figure out how to continue decoupling valuation from reality if that keeps system going.