Google (now under parent company Alphabet) invested roughly $900 million as the majority of a ~$1 billion funding round alongside Fidelity Investments. This gave Google an initial equity stake of about 7–7.5% in SpaceX at a valuation of roughly $10–12 billion.
matwood 2 hours ago [-]
Remember this was also when SpaceX was actually about space, instead of mostly AI and Twitter. Long-term shareholders that were sold on the space, have to be thinking about how to get out once their lockups expire.
trimbo 55 minutes ago [-]
I don't think companies expanding their business should be the only reason to sell. Apple was a desktop and laptop computer company when they released the iPod. Nokia was a company making rubber products when they started making cellular equipment in the 1970s. Amazon was a ecomm company when they released AWS. Etc.
Sure, I'm cherrypicking the success stories but I don't think it's the only signal people should use.
paulryanrogers 20 minutes ago [-]
Companies laundering their CEO's other failing companies is certainly a reason to sell.
browningstreet 10 minutes ago [-]
SpaceX had adult leadership for a long time. I suspect there was a tacit agreement with Musk about a bit of separation.
He broke through that professional firewall when he merged xAI with SpaceX and then pushed it to go public as he did. I also posit that Gwynne Shotwell is weirdly undervalued for what she's accomplished and what she's put up with, and I think that will show up some time in the future.
There was enough technical analysis to show that even Musk's cult feed can't overcome the significant financial hardships he laid on SpaceX. I personally think it was his jump the shark move. He can't really go up again after this. He no longer has any untainted assets for mega-exploits.
miohtama 50 minutes ago [-]
Nvidia was a company making PC gamer hardware, not high-performance computing.
infinitewars 39 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
dgellow 2 hours ago [-]
Not just that, but private investors were sold shares that all had the same voting rights. Since just before the IPO SpaceX now has dual class shares, Elon and a few insiders have class-B shares with 10x the voting power, while everybody else (including private investors) have class-A shares with 1x the voting power
georgeburdell 2 hours ago [-]
With the serious lapses in governance being made by founders with these special shares, such as Musk and Zuckerberg, I wonder if the shares without these special rights will be substantially discounted. What rights do these other shareholders retain that would keep them valuable? Rights to compensation in the case of bankruptcy?
jdross 2 hours ago [-]
These have become some of the most valuable companies on Earth. The idea that there are lapses in governance in these companies is insane. Any shareholder is buying in fully aware of the governance structure. Many because of it! Shareholders’ rights are clearly enumerated.
janderson215 1 hours ago [-]
I agree many buy because of the governance structure and founders retaining control, but there is a lot of dumb money out there.
From Claude via stockanalysis.com:
META — institutions 67.51%, insiders 13.49%, float 2.19B of 2.54B shares outstanding. That leaves roughly 19% as retail/other.
SPCX — institutions 5.95%, insiders 46.47%, float only 638.65M of 13.17B shares. Residual is ~47.6%, but that is not retail.
dragontamer 1 hours ago [-]
The typical "investor" is an ETF these days.
Your standard SPY or VTI investor doesn't know jack diddly squat about shareholder rights, nor do they ever plan to invoke them.
DaedalusII 50 minutes ago [-]
you should have a look at proxy firms. you would be surprised
NuclearPM 1 hours ago [-]
> Any shareholder is buying in fully aware of the governance structure.
This is laughable. Many shareholders don’t even know they own stock in these companies.
andsoitis 19 minutes ago [-]
That’s an indictment on them. You should know where you’re putting your money and why. If you delegate this to a professional or influencer, you do not get to blame them. After all, you could just buy something you think you understand better like real estate or keep it in cash.
panarky 2 hours ago [-]
Generally the 10x shares aren't traded so it's impossible to see if they trade at a premium.
One exception is GOOG / GOOGL which both trade actively, and there's not much difference in price.
The mechanism for a price divergence could be accumulation of the 10x shares to seize control, but even if you could buy the entire float, it wouldn't be enough to take control, so that mechanism never happens.
Polizeiposaune 1 hours ago [-]
There are three classes of Google stock.
By voting rights, they have 10x (founder stock), 1x (trading as GOOGL), and 0x (trading as GOOG). The class with 10x voting rights does not trade publicly. The class with 1x voting rights does not have enough voting power to control the direction of the company so there is no real difference in perceived value between GOOG and GOOGL.
Employee stock awards are IIRC all in restricted shares of GOOG (0x voting rights) so they don't dilute the power of the founders.
chii 2 hours ago [-]
> I wonder if the shares without these special rights will be substantially discounted
it should be, but the market might be a bit irrational.
onlyrealcuzzo 2 hours ago [-]
SpaceX is WAY more about space than Twitter.
Twitter by itself is lucky to be worth $15B anymore.
The space portion of SpaceX is easily worth 10x that.
xAI is theoretically the hype machine that makes up the remainder of the value.
mrits 1 hours ago [-]
Where did you get $15 billion from?
dopa42365 1 hours ago [-]
Or $150 billion SpaceX? Internet constellations may be mildly profitable, but beyond that, most things are an endless money pit without clear path towards profit anytime soon. Like, no one is going to spend a trillion on a moon base (or exponentially more for mars) without plans to somehow recover all that money.
cineticdaffodil 3 minutes ago [-]
Moon is taxfree zone?
cowboy_henk 2 hours ago [-]
Twitter is the “hype machine”. It’s basically the advertising arm disguised as a social media company.
At SpaceX’s valuation, even a 1-2% increase in share price due to some astroturfing on the platform they themselves own basically pays back the cost of acquiring twitter.
miohtama 2 hours ago [-]
SpaceX, like Tesla, has always been about Elon Musk.
Investors are buying Musk, like they were buying Warren Buffett with Berkshire Hathaway. Long-term shareholders are not buying space; they are buying Musk. This has been clear to everyone since the beginning; it has been well communicated (look at SpaceX governance rules in Texas), and there is nothing mystical about it.
It's very likely Musk will roll everything up into a single Musk conglomerate.
SecretDreams 2 hours ago [-]
Investors are buying into the fallacy that musk can continue to work as a hype man, rather than some visionary or innovator. They like that he can make stock numbers go up, seemingly against all odds and reason.
Whether this trend continues or not indefinitely will largely determine if incestors start looking for the door.
miohtama 2 hours ago [-]
It's a valid point. But the markets are a harsh mistress. If you don't like fallacies, you don't buy. And if you think the number is not going to go up, you can always short the stock.
In defence of Mr Musk, despite his character flaws, Tesla is the only Western electric car company in the top 20, and this includes Korea and Japan. Also, SpaceX is ~90% of the world's commercial rocket launch capacity.
But this does not mean SpaceX would be correctly priced at the moment. It may be expensive, but SpaceX is going to have many years to come to reap the benefits of their hard work building the business.
wongarsu 2 hours ago [-]
Unlike Tesla, SpaceX is still a visionary and innovative company. Their current cash problems are precisely because they are so heavily invested in so many innovations that have yet to pan out
dmix 5 minutes ago [-]
Tesla is making two big R&D plays into humanoid robotics and cyber taxi. That’s just as bold and requiring innovation as the SpaceX AI and starship stuff. That plus Tesla/SpaceX/Intel are together putting big money into Terafab to make semiconductors in Texas for those platforms.
mhitza 2 hours ago [-]
Love the typo.
I think Musk's luck is running out, he's been too political this past year and he seems to also have run out of geek "street cred". Remember youtubers visiting (whatever the Tesla trade show was called) were more perplexed than impressed with what has been shown. Similar sentiment seen across trade shows (like CES) where everything was AI and no one seemed to ask themselves "why are we putting AI in this?". The answer, of course, for startups and stock listed companies, to make themselves more valuable on paper.
Investors would probably be aware of that if they run any kind of sentiment analysis on online social media content. And at the same time there's some pull-out from tech stock. So maybe some are starting to realise that things are too shaky for their risk profile?
mrits 1 hours ago [-]
It’s so weird to see people actively try to criticize arguably the most successful person in the history of Earth.
ajmurmann 54 minutes ago [-]
It's because his companies have insane P/E and constantly overpromise
Applejinx 19 minutes ago [-]
If you framed it as 'the biggest criminal' it'd still be impressive but would read mighty different. Acquiring money and power is no way to go through life. Not at that cost.
40 minutes ago [-]
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2 hours ago [-]
Well X is at the end of the name, so first is about Space, then about X, right?
In fact it was often mentioned as a recommended way to try to invest in SpaceX via proxy, before IPO. I don't think that advice had much merit, but it was there nevertheless.
wenbin 1 hours ago [-]
Alphabet is the modern day berkshire hathaway.
Alphabet’s investment holdings (eg, spacex, anthropic..) are worth in the same order of magnitude of BRK’s (~$300B)
The track record of google’s M&A is pretty good.
Except for search and cloud, many of Google’s important products were from M&A - Maps, Docs, android, doubleclick, youtube , deep mind, etc.
glimshe 1 hours ago [-]
The companies you listed have great synergy with Google's core business. What's Google's play with SpaceX? Data centers in space?
cromka 45 seconds ago [-]
Google Cloud, low latency cross-continental links, etc.
theptip 57 minutes ago [-]
Google X was building Loon at least a decade ago to solve internet connectivity with laser-networked high-altitude balloons. They clearly benefit structurally from expanding access to the internet to the unconnected population.
So on that front, while I didn’t guess this, it does sound like a good investment.
Furthermore, while I am skeptical about the “DC in space” thing in the short term, and Musk’s timelines are, generously, something like P99.9 outcomes, it seems plausible that in 10 years it might make sense. And at that point Google will want to put their TPUs in orbit, too.
benoau 1 hours ago [-]
Presumably Starlink for routing throughout space. Google does under-sea cables and domestic internet access too.
adastra22 1 hours ago [-]
They invested in SpaceX long before Starlink was a thibgy
adastra22 1 hours ago [-]
They had a big early investment back when Google was doing more crazy out of scope things.
DaedalusII 49 minutes ago [-]
starlink cellular connection for android in future
melenaboija 1 hours ago [-]
Similar of SpaceX and Twitter I guess
colechristensen 34 minutes ago [-]
One would presume connectivity and services in space as industry and services spread there. Asteroid mining, on orbit manufacturing, space colonies/tourism, data centers in space, centers for working outside traditional government jurisdiction.
wenbin 57 minutes ago [-]
I believe the competent people at Google did a ton of research before any M&A and private investments like SpaceX.
but I doubt they could have thought through every possible outcome or every direction a private investment might take
we humans have limitations. Oftentimes, good investing involves luck and intuition. It may still be far better than gambling, but it can’t be 100% data-driven or explained purely in scientific terms
Who knows? SpaceX could eventually launch something truly groundbreaking or something completely unexpected in the far future, and Google couldn’t have known that when they made the investment. We simply don’t know. Sometimes we just have to attribute it to luck, intuition, or something we can’t fully explain.
nonethewiser 56 minutes ago [-]
How is Alphabet the modern Berkshire Hathaway?
m101 5 minutes ago [-]
Given how much ai spending Google need to do, and that the are selling equity for the first time in a long time to do it, no doubt spacex shares are going to be dumped out they moment they can.
throwaw12 3 hours ago [-]
100x return, I would sell immediately after this kind of gain, maybe that's why I am not a Google
rsynnott 3 hours ago [-]
Per the article, they can’t, yet.
rf15 3 hours ago [-]
I'm sure at an $80 valuation they will tell everyone how it's time to buy as it slides down further
knodi 3 hours ago [-]
Average pre-ipo sale price is $6.xx
ajross 3 hours ago [-]
This is a micro/macro mistake. You obviously can't dump a 6% stake at strike price on Robinhood.
"The Market", at this scale, means "You find the buyer(s) yourself and work up the deal with a hundred lawyers and PR staff and hope the contract negotiation stays secret".
TheAtomic 3 hours ago [-]
Actually, that's the service provided by GS, etc. They have those buyers on the other side of their Rolodex.
imagent 2 hours ago [-]
What is GS?
smnscu 2 hours ago [-]
Presumably Goldman Sachs (or any investment bank worth its salt)
thaumasiotes 2 hours ago [-]
Well, to be really accurate, I assume GS is Goldman Sachs alone and "any investment bank worth its salt" is referred to by the "etc".
Mtinie 2 hours ago [-]
Goldman Sachs
ajross 2 hours ago [-]
Well, yes. They're the ones who actually employ the hundred lawyers and PR staff. But that's what it takes, and it's not about clicking some buttons on a Web 2.0 Day Trading UI.
kingleopold 2 hours ago [-]
tell me how you dont know anything about dark markets and dark pools. I loveeeee how you average people dont know how they operate at top
sidcool 3 hours ago [-]
There would be some laws in place. And it would also stress the relationship with Elon.
hiddencost 3 hours ago [-]
(1) there's a lock out, they can't legally
(2) Moving that kind of volume at market price is extremely difficult
(3) This disclosure was required by law as part of their earnings. They would rather have said nothing and quietly offloaded it.
One consequence of booking the revenue is that they're going to have to report a loss when they sell it.
It's possible there's some tax shenanigans at play (idk): report the profit, mark it against their massive AI capex, sell later when they can book a loss. (I'm not sure if it works that way, it wouldn't for an individual, but maybe they can find a way to trigger a stepped up basis.)
WarmWash 1 hours ago [-]
Retail doesn't really move stocks like Google too much, and institutions might understand Google and it's finances better than Google...i.e. there are no accounting tricks or mysterious losses that can shake institutional analysts much (besides illegally hidden stuff). They will perfectly understand why Google is taking a "loss" on the sale.
embedding-shape 3 hours ago [-]
Feeling sated and not constant greed is no way to build billionaires, nope.
lotsofpulp 2 hours ago [-]
Your comment is difficult to parse. Is Alphabet greedy for spending $900M on SpaceX equity many years ago before the business was built and there was a risk it would not be built?
Or is Alphabet greedy for holding onto the equity instead of selling it for cash? Or is throwaw12 greedy for wanting to sell something after a 100x return?
tonyhart7 3 hours ago [-]
if you are big company like google, another 100 billion is not gonna make you feel better since cold cash is liability at that scale
100 billion is nothing if that money can put you in better spot at technology landscape
grim_io 3 hours ago [-]
6% is more than all of the issued IPO shares. They were 5%, right?
fancyfredbot 2 hours ago [-]
Correct
fco356pal 51 minutes ago [-]
One of the best corporate investments in recent history. >100x returns in 10 years
nonethewiser 55 minutes ago [-]
Maybe hacker news is wrong and SpaceX is actually valuable.
throwaway27448 23 minutes ago [-]
I don't think anyone is arguing SpaceX is actually valuable, just overvalued and the repeated recipient of obvious corruption.
yieldcrv 48 minutes ago [-]
$500bn marketcap is still valuable
Its how it declines to that point at another 70% loss from $1.5 trillion that people are worried about
bombcar 3 hours ago [-]
What’s that in data centers?
throwatdem12311 1 hours ago [-]
Can’t wait for SpaceX to go even lower.
rubyfan 4 hours ago [-]
Didn’t they just raise $85B “for AI”?
brainwad 3 hours ago [-]
It's not like they can sell the SPCX stock. It's still locked up.
simianwords 48 minutes ago [-]
Why is this not seen as a circular deal? But other oracle debt is said to be circular
outside1234 4 hours ago [-]
Hopefully they made this investment pre-IPO at some vastly lower valuation because otherwise… …this is a not going to end well for them.
jddj 4 hours ago [-]
They got in at a ~12B valuation. They'll be fine
Aboutplants 3 hours ago [-]
If true then they paid under $800 Million for their 6%, now valued at $94 Billion.
dagaci 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, google they paid $900 millions in 2015 for about 7% stake, 100X. % Number probably fell because of all the "merging".
forrestthewoods 1 hours ago [-]
They’ll be fine? Dang I wanna be “fine”!
carlosjobim 3 hours ago [-]
Why? They will still have their same stake no matter what happens with the stock price.
I am short both Google and SpaceX RN; SpaceX's IPO smells foul. Google is an AI-bubble short; Anthropic and OpenAI haven't IPOed yet.
matwood 3 hours ago [-]
Not sure why you'd short Google. Their business was doing great pre-AI, and will likely do great regardless of what happens to AI. The rumors of their demise when AI hit the scene were clearly greatly exaggerated.
pier25 2 hours ago [-]
Excluding all the capex from AI this last quarter has been one of their best.
hansmayer 2 hours ago [-]
> Excluding
But you don´t get to to that. Would be like "Excluding my business costs, my company profits are the same as my revenue".
mr_toad 1 hours ago [-]
> But you don´t get to to that.
You can, and for tax purposes you must. The bean counters hate that you can’t deduct capex.
delecti 1 hours ago [-]
I think the point is more: as soon as they stop with the AI silliness they'll return to being a quite strong business.
aoeusnth1 2 hours ago [-]
The return on capital is also phenomenal. To be a bear, you have to assume that will crater.
jhpankow 46 minutes ago [-]
EBITDAI
next_xibalba 2 hours ago [-]
There is quite a bit of information out there as to how Google is achieving short term growth in their core search business. And boy, it is ugly. It does not signal long term continued growth.
adabyron 2 hours ago [-]
Please explain more. I haven't seen anything of quality. Best I can observe is they've increased ads on videos and pages.
1 hours ago [-]
hansmayer 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
throwaw12 3 hours ago [-]
from your list, I think only Google has moat and something I would short least.
Google has hardware, software ecosystem, mobile ecosystem, controls browser, has access to 2B+ users, has talent to come up with ideas - perfect spot for AI
conartist6 3 hours ago [-]
Now Microsoft, them I'd short. In a way I have by starting my own company to undermine their various competitive advantages comprehensively
matwood 3 hours ago [-]
The number of companies that default to using Teams shows why MSFT isn't going anywhere.
etempleton 2 hours ago [-]
Microsoft bundles enough things at a low enough price that it seems silly not to use Microsoft if you are a corporation, because the alternative is to buy a number of different SAAS products (which are generally superior) at a higher price and have to deal with half a dozen to a dozen vendors.
adabyron 2 hours ago [-]
I will be very concerned for MSFT if small companies start outperforming larger companies. That's when Microsoft's advantage disappears. If AI truly encourages smaller, flatter organizations. IMO large enterprise adoption is their moat.
mr_toad 1 hours ago [-]
Installed by default is their moat. Trying to arrange a video conference on other platforms means making sure that everyone has the client installed, which can be a real headache. Teams is the common denominator.
conartist6 2 hours ago [-]
The only strategy that can work against Microsoft is a full broadside. You can't try beat them in just one niche, you have to go after the whole tech stack they offer. That's what I'm willing to try doing.
AznHisoka 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, exactly, would I bet that Microsoft’s products are inferior in quality to others. Yes.
Would I bet that other humans would believe that? Nope.
jeremyjh 3 hours ago [-]
Microsoft has many of the same advantages but is incapable of judging the quality of the products it makes.
legulere 2 hours ago [-]
Microsoft is in the same situation as IBM decades ago. „ nobody ever got fired for buying IBM“ used to be a common saying. If at all you’ll see a slow decline.
the__alchemist 3 hours ago [-]
Concur; I am shorting them as well. Your approach is more clever!
onlypostonce 2 hours ago [-]
Wow why has nobody thought of this /s
vkou 23 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft is in a better position (as their b2b ecosystem can realistically be made LLM-agnostic), but Google will be fine.
chasd00 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe you’re right but, man, there’s easier money to be made than betting against those two companies.
mr_toad 55 minutes ago [-]
Have you seen Microsoft’s price over the last year. If AI doesn’t pan out they’re going to be the next IBM.
zulux 2 hours ago [-]
Agreed, and in my opinion he's 100% right. But I'm still invested in both.
The market hasn't been working on fundamentals for a long time. I have a fair amount of value stocks and a bunch of cash lying around, so I'll be ok.
I really feel for anybody trying to invest to grow right now; there's no obvious safer play.
nubg 2 hours ago [-]
Like?
chasd00 2 hours ago [-]
> Like?
Vanguard’s total market fund (VTSAX). Just setup a monthly purchase and forget about it. Turn wealth building into a time problem instead of a skill/luck/cash problem. (Assuming time is on your side)
the__alchemist 2 hours ago [-]
All of the quantum computing companies (Especially QUBT, which is outright fraud), although the window may have passed on that.
gizajob 2 hours ago [-]
Google makes money hand over fist and they don’t have enough things to spend it on. AI is a natural fit for them to burn all their profits into. Gemini’s integration is, I think, absolutely awesome - it’s completely changing the way I interact with the concept of googling and finding answers, and is free of sign ups or purposeful interactions with the likes of ChatGPT or Claude where you know you’re AI-ing. So your short could work, but it’s not going to work for google’s involvement in an AI-bubble, it’s predicated on the entire market tanking, which should have been occurring for the past two years already if fundamentals and capex translating into profit were what the market cared about. But it seems like the market isn’t caring right now so you could be holding that short for quite a while before it turns into a major return.
SpaceX I actually bought at the IPO price because I think the company will be around in 30 years time, so as fraudulent and mispriced as it is, having a small holding over that kind of horizon I believe will be profitable. And I want to be that kind of old-timer who can chuckle at buying it at the IPO and holding through the crash and still holding when they are on Mars and beyond and SPCX is worth multiples of what it is today.
the__alchemist 1 hours ago [-]
Nailed it. I didn't state this explicitly, but:
> So your short could work, but it’s not going to work for google’s involvement in an AI-bubble, it’s predicated on the entire market tanking
Is indeed a required assumption. Major return is not going to happen with this, Not losing a big chunk of my money is the goal!
> SpaceX I actually bought at the IPO price because I think the company will be around in 30 years time, so as fraudulent and mispriced as it is, having a small holding over that kind of horizon I believe will be profitable. And I want to be that kind of old-timer who can chuckle at buying it at the IPO and holding through the crash and still holding when they are on Mars and beyond and SPCX is worth multiples of what it is today.
I think that's a fine play as well. The short is more of an "This IPO price doesn't make sense; sell within a year after it settle"
hahahaa 3 hours ago [-]
Short Google? Early is wrong you know?
IAmGraydon 3 hours ago [-]
That’s a pretty weird take considering they’re down 21% in the last 2 months. How, exactly, is this early?
DanHulton 2 hours ago [-]
That’s brave, and I don’t mean that shittily, but more cautiously. Like, I’m thinking of the Simpsons shirt-tugging meme when I read this.
I’ve always been hesitant to short stocks because of the old adage “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and the market has a REAL vested interest in seeing these companies not explode.
Good luck on this one, genuinely, because you may need it.
(That said, if you DO win big on this one, I think we’re all fucked, so maybe I shouldn’t be wishing you TOO much luck. =) )
the__alchemist 2 hours ago [-]
Sage advice!. In shorts like these, there's no outcome that "wins big" unfortunately, unless you do it with large amounts of money. (Unlike a long position on an individual stock that 10xs, or options which are much riskier). But... it will ideally make the landing softer after the Fall.
Rover222 2 hours ago [-]
SpaceX near $100/share is a great long position now, IMO.
deadbabe 3 hours ago [-]
Google is not a good short. They are actually one of the companies that will likely come out on top when the AI-bubble has popped.
Anthropic and OpenAI though will likely be dead, killed by cheap open weight LLMs and local LLMs.
maipen 2 hours ago [-]
Most sane comment.
Even in the last Elon Musk interview by The Economist, he admited that it's likely China will win at the end.
The gap is so close now. Opinions matter not, the Chinese will have their own GPUs, RAM and everything they need.
Giants like google and spacex are the few that can handle it because their business is not only about shipping the best models.
api 2 hours ago [-]
I expect China to eventually develop or sidestep EUV lithography. When that happens it’s over.
It will also crash the price of chips globally. These high prices are kind of artificially buoyed by the fact that China can’t obtain ASML machines. This keeps China’s vast proven ability to scale manufacturing off the playing field.
This is so clearly the Chinese century. Doesn’t mean the US, EU, etc become backwaters. England was a huge influence on the 20th century. It does mean that China will drive tech and the global economy forward.
Fricken 1 hours ago [-]
It isn't currently —for google— only about shipping the best models, but in the future however...
4 hours ago [-]
teddyX 1 hours ago [-]
Bad decisions like this explain a lot
alfiedotwtf 4 hours ago [-]
FIFY: Google discloses $94B loss
minraws 4 hours ago [-]
They didn't invest 94B$
But yes the stock could go down much further and I hope they are willing to show the losses if they can show this as gains today.
Imagine the next call being about how their 95$B went to sub 30B$..
Will that be a negative line item. I don't see the point in disclosing this stake as earnings.
But I do get that accounting was made as a tool for companies to show off.
HFguy 2 hours ago [-]
Accounting goes back thousands of years. It was not made as a tool to show off. Lesson is more that tools can be abused for other purposes than intended.
consensus1 3 hours ago [-]
They don't have to be willing because hiding the losses would be a crime. And it still doesn't matter b/c anyone with a calculator can tell you exactly what the value of their position is on any given day. The $94 billion is 2.4% of Google's market cap, so even if SpaceX goes to zero it will be barely noticeable from the background noise of the stock price movement.
locallost 4 hours ago [-]
It will be difficult since they acquired it for less than a billion 10 years ago.
"The company’s marketable equity securities include $80 billion in shares subject to short-term restrictions and $14.1 billion subject to long-term restrictions"
Actually more like $14.1 and whatever value the other $80 is worth when they sell. Which is probably going to be worth well North of whatever is lost on the $14.1 B long-term... All part of the scam to inflate the value of the AI bubble
newsclues 3 hours ago [-]
hate makes people stupid.
formvoltron 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
kennywinker 4 hours ago [-]
Idk, but he sure did try to get invited to Epstein’s island to “party”.
It is extremely funny that Epstein is clearly all “oh, fuck, not this guy, gotta make an excuse”, here.
consensus1 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not seeing it.
> “Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays. Is there a good time to visit?” Musk states on 13 December 2013.
> “any day 1st - 8th . play it by ear if you want. always space for you,” Epstein replies.
> Musk then sends several emails relaying his schedule, and the two settle on 2 January as a date for the visit. The email exchange ends with Epstein telling Musk that he would need to remain in New York and sending his regrets that they could not meet.
> “Bad news- Unfortunately , my schedule will keep me in New York . I was really looking forward to finally spending some time together with just fun as the agenda. so i am very disappointed. Hopefully we can schedule another time in the near future,” Epstein wrote.
> In November 2012, Epstein sent Musk an email asking “how many people will you be for the heli to island”.
> “Probably just Talulah and me. What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Musk replied, in an apparent reference to his former wife Talulah Riley.
> Musk followed up with an email on 25 December in response to another Epstein message that encouraged him to visit and offered use of his helicopter.
> “Do you have any parties planned? I’ve been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose. The invitation is much appreciated, but a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I’m looking for,” Musk wrote.
> “Understood , I will see you on st Barth, the ratio on my island might make Talilah uncomfortable,” Epstein responded.
> “Ratio is not a problem for Talulah,” Musk said.
> On 2 January 2013, Musk sent Epstein an email suggesting that the visit wouldn’t take place saying: “Logistics won’t work this time around.”
Google (now under parent company Alphabet) invested roughly $900 million as the majority of a ~$1 billion funding round alongside Fidelity Investments. This gave Google an initial equity stake of about 7–7.5% in SpaceX at a valuation of roughly $10–12 billion.
Sure, I'm cherrypicking the success stories but I don't think it's the only signal people should use.
He broke through that professional firewall when he merged xAI with SpaceX and then pushed it to go public as he did. I also posit that Gwynne Shotwell is weirdly undervalued for what she's accomplished and what she's put up with, and I think that will show up some time in the future.
There was enough technical analysis to show that even Musk's cult feed can't overcome the significant financial hardships he laid on SpaceX. I personally think it was his jump the shark move. He can't really go up again after this. He no longer has any untainted assets for mega-exploits.
From Claude via stockanalysis.com: META — institutions 67.51%, insiders 13.49%, float 2.19B of 2.54B shares outstanding. That leaves roughly 19% as retail/other.
SPCX — institutions 5.95%, insiders 46.47%, float only 638.65M of 13.17B shares. Residual is ~47.6%, but that is not retail.
Your standard SPY or VTI investor doesn't know jack diddly squat about shareholder rights, nor do they ever plan to invoke them.
This is laughable. Many shareholders don’t even know they own stock in these companies.
One exception is GOOG / GOOGL which both trade actively, and there's not much difference in price.
The mechanism for a price divergence could be accumulation of the 10x shares to seize control, but even if you could buy the entire float, it wouldn't be enough to take control, so that mechanism never happens.
By voting rights, they have 10x (founder stock), 1x (trading as GOOGL), and 0x (trading as GOOG). The class with 10x voting rights does not trade publicly. The class with 1x voting rights does not have enough voting power to control the direction of the company so there is no real difference in perceived value between GOOG and GOOGL.
Employee stock awards are IIRC all in restricted shares of GOOG (0x voting rights) so they don't dilute the power of the founders.
it should be, but the market might be a bit irrational.
Twitter by itself is lucky to be worth $15B anymore.
The space portion of SpaceX is easily worth 10x that.
xAI is theoretically the hype machine that makes up the remainder of the value.
At SpaceX’s valuation, even a 1-2% increase in share price due to some astroturfing on the platform they themselves own basically pays back the cost of acquiring twitter.
Investors are buying Musk, like they were buying Warren Buffett with Berkshire Hathaway. Long-term shareholders are not buying space; they are buying Musk. This has been clear to everyone since the beginning; it has been well communicated (look at SpaceX governance rules in Texas), and there is nothing mystical about it.
It's very likely Musk will roll everything up into a single Musk conglomerate.
Whether this trend continues or not indefinitely will largely determine if incestors start looking for the door.
In defence of Mr Musk, despite his character flaws, Tesla is the only Western electric car company in the top 20, and this includes Korea and Japan. Also, SpaceX is ~90% of the world's commercial rocket launch capacity.
But this does not mean SpaceX would be correctly priced at the moment. It may be expensive, but SpaceX is going to have many years to come to reap the benefits of their hard work building the business.
I think Musk's luck is running out, he's been too political this past year and he seems to also have run out of geek "street cred". Remember youtubers visiting (whatever the Tesla trade show was called) were more perplexed than impressed with what has been shown. Similar sentiment seen across trade shows (like CES) where everything was AI and no one seemed to ask themselves "why are we putting AI in this?". The answer, of course, for startups and stock listed companies, to make themselves more valuable on paper.
Investors would probably be aware of that if they run any kind of sentiment analysis on online social media content. And at the same time there's some pull-out from tech stock. So maybe some are starting to realise that things are too shaky for their risk profile?
/s
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8914956
Alphabet’s investment holdings (eg, spacex, anthropic..) are worth in the same order of magnitude of BRK’s (~$300B)
The track record of google’s M&A is pretty good.
Except for search and cloud, many of Google’s important products were from M&A - Maps, Docs, android, doubleclick, youtube , deep mind, etc.
So on that front, while I didn’t guess this, it does sound like a good investment.
Furthermore, while I am skeptical about the “DC in space” thing in the short term, and Musk’s timelines are, generously, something like P99.9 outcomes, it seems plausible that in 10 years it might make sense. And at that point Google will want to put their TPUs in orbit, too.
but I doubt they could have thought through every possible outcome or every direction a private investment might take
we humans have limitations. Oftentimes, good investing involves luck and intuition. It may still be far better than gambling, but it can’t be 100% data-driven or explained purely in scientific terms
Who knows? SpaceX could eventually launch something truly groundbreaking or something completely unexpected in the far future, and Google couldn’t have known that when they made the investment. We simply don’t know. Sometimes we just have to attribute it to luck, intuition, or something we can’t fully explain.
"The Market", at this scale, means "You find the buyer(s) yourself and work up the deal with a hundred lawyers and PR staff and hope the contract negotiation stays secret".
One consequence of booking the revenue is that they're going to have to report a loss when they sell it.
It's possible there's some tax shenanigans at play (idk): report the profit, mark it against their massive AI capex, sell later when they can book a loss. (I'm not sure if it works that way, it wouldn't for an individual, but maybe they can find a way to trigger a stepped up basis.)
Or is Alphabet greedy for holding onto the equity instead of selling it for cash? Or is throwaw12 greedy for wanting to sell something after a 100x return?
100 billion is nothing if that money can put you in better spot at technology landscape
Its how it declines to that point at another 70% loss from $1.5 trillion that people are worried about
But you don´t get to to that. Would be like "Excluding my business costs, my company profits are the same as my revenue".
You can, and for tax purposes you must. The bean counters hate that you can’t deduct capex.
Google has hardware, software ecosystem, mobile ecosystem, controls browser, has access to 2B+ users, has talent to come up with ideas - perfect spot for AI
Would I bet that other humans would believe that? Nope.
The market hasn't been working on fundamentals for a long time. I have a fair amount of value stocks and a bunch of cash lying around, so I'll be ok.
I really feel for anybody trying to invest to grow right now; there's no obvious safer play.
Vanguard’s total market fund (VTSAX). Just setup a monthly purchase and forget about it. Turn wealth building into a time problem instead of a skill/luck/cash problem. (Assuming time is on your side)
SpaceX I actually bought at the IPO price because I think the company will be around in 30 years time, so as fraudulent and mispriced as it is, having a small holding over that kind of horizon I believe will be profitable. And I want to be that kind of old-timer who can chuckle at buying it at the IPO and holding through the crash and still holding when they are on Mars and beyond and SPCX is worth multiples of what it is today.
> So your short could work, but it’s not going to work for google’s involvement in an AI-bubble, it’s predicated on the entire market tanking
Is indeed a required assumption. Major return is not going to happen with this, Not losing a big chunk of my money is the goal!
> SpaceX I actually bought at the IPO price because I think the company will be around in 30 years time, so as fraudulent and mispriced as it is, having a small holding over that kind of horizon I believe will be profitable. And I want to be that kind of old-timer who can chuckle at buying it at the IPO and holding through the crash and still holding when they are on Mars and beyond and SPCX is worth multiples of what it is today.
I think that's a fine play as well. The short is more of an "This IPO price doesn't make sense; sell within a year after it settle"
I’ve always been hesitant to short stocks because of the old adage “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and the market has a REAL vested interest in seeing these companies not explode.
Good luck on this one, genuinely, because you may need it.
(That said, if you DO win big on this one, I think we’re all fucked, so maybe I shouldn’t be wishing you TOO much luck. =) )
Anthropic and OpenAI though will likely be dead, killed by cheap open weight LLMs and local LLMs.
Even in the last Elon Musk interview by The Economist, he admited that it's likely China will win at the end.
The gap is so close now. Opinions matter not, the Chinese will have their own GPUs, RAM and everything they need.
Giants like google and spacex are the few that can handle it because their business is not only about shipping the best models.
It will also crash the price of chips globally. These high prices are kind of artificially buoyed by the fact that China can’t obtain ASML machines. This keeps China’s vast proven ability to scale manufacturing off the playing field.
This is so clearly the Chinese century. Doesn’t mean the US, EU, etc become backwaters. England was a huge influence on the 20th century. It does mean that China will drive tech and the global economy forward.
But yes the stock could go down much further and I hope they are willing to show the losses if they can show this as gains today.
Imagine the next call being about how their 95$B went to sub 30B$..
Will that be a negative line item. I don't see the point in disclosing this stake as earnings.
But I do get that accounting was made as a tool for companies to show off.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/20/spacex-fundi...
Actually more like $14.1 and whatever value the other $80 is worth when they sell. Which is probably going to be worth well North of whatever is lost on the $14.1 B long-term... All part of the scam to inflate the value of the AI bubble
For example.
> “Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays. Is there a good time to visit?” Musk states on 13 December 2013.
> “any day 1st - 8th . play it by ear if you want. always space for you,” Epstein replies.
> Musk then sends several emails relaying his schedule, and the two settle on 2 January as a date for the visit. The email exchange ends with Epstein telling Musk that he would need to remain in New York and sending his regrets that they could not meet.
> “Bad news- Unfortunately , my schedule will keep me in New York . I was really looking forward to finally spending some time together with just fun as the agenda. so i am very disappointed. Hopefully we can schedule another time in the near future,” Epstein wrote.
> In November 2012, Epstein sent Musk an email asking “how many people will you be for the heli to island”.
> “Probably just Talulah and me. What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Musk replied, in an apparent reference to his former wife Talulah Riley.
> Musk followed up with an email on 25 December in response to another Epstein message that encouraged him to visit and offered use of his helicopter.
> “Do you have any parties planned? I’ve been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose. The invitation is much appreciated, but a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I’m looking for,” Musk wrote.
> “Understood , I will see you on st Barth, the ratio on my island might make Talilah uncomfortable,” Epstein responded.
> “Ratio is not a problem for Talulah,” Musk said.
> On 2 January 2013, Musk sent Epstein an email suggesting that the visit wouldn’t take place saying: “Logistics won’t work this time around.”
[0] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01762...