SpaceX Is Basically a Huge Meme Stock | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX Is Basically a Huge Meme Stock

theatlantic.com

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* https://web.archive.org/web/20260414235001/https://www.theat...

* https://archive.md/w1p99

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? :(

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

I mean, either a company is profitable or it is not. You don't get to say "if you ignore the massive pile of burning money in our parking lot, we are profitable". Or, well, I suppose you can _say_ that (see WeWork), but you can't expect analysts to be too impressed with it.

The S-1 will be interesting; I wonder if they'll try going with a bulllshit metric like WeWork did ("Community Adjusted EBITDA", which was, seemingly, pretty much "profit, if you exclude basically all costs").

Cockroaches everywhere: starlink revenue won't be enough to fund constellation sustainment. Refurbishment costs for Falcon 9 make the reusability economics dubious. And xAI is just a disaster. So is Twitter.

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.

> The orbital datacentre concept is just plain nutty

It's edge computing. Obsoletes the round trip for ground based AI crunch and power draw, cooling.

Except there is little cooling or power in space, depending on your position in orbit you could only have one of those at a time.

military/industrial customers want this for tactical operations fully discreet low latency compute that integrates with there existing space hardware so the ability to run drones, and meatbots from space, with low hardware requirements on the ground, but with lets say 1000~2000 users max, power users, but not that many. so batteries, heat sinks,he refrigeration radiators, on a sattelite fleet. they have been trialing this for years and are pitching putting ALL of the military compute in space, no more dirty civilian hands on there toys

I saw Musk discussing that and his main argument in favour is there's unlimited solar power whereas on earth there are a lot of power constraints.

Sure, in the same way that there is unlimited solar power on earth.

There are orbits with 24/7 or near-24/7 sunlight - but those are very undesirable if you want a low-latency data link back to Earth. Just like you can get 24/7 sunlight on the North / South Pole - but they are still pretty bad locations for a data center.

LEO orbits like those used by Starlink have far better connectivity, but about the same sunlight exposure as the surface as the planet will be between you and the sun about half the time.

Also, power is the easy part. Cooling is far harder.

You still need a round trip to space and back - which with a Starlink-like orbit means a distance of at least 400km. At that point it makes significantly more sense to place your "edge computing AI engine" at a 5G base station a few dozen km away.

Unless the other computing stuff isn't on Earth?

9000 satellites that last less than five years, and no path from EBITDA to a GAAP profit. Never mind the crazy space data centers, even the supposedly profitable part won't be.

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47606845

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47613231

SpaceX is profit in the sense that they report an adjusted non-GAAP version of EBITDA where they change the definition and inclusion of CapEx.

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

please elaborate

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.

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47606845

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47613231

Please hold this bag for me.

You misspelled fraud

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