But that's what we do in stock and markets and well whatever we are living through, sometimes bad decisions can have good results because you were right place right time. if it happens more than once, that doesn't mean it was incredible it just means the bias works.
If 1% of the innovators had access to levels of cheap capital Musk has had, we might be living in a different reality.
SamAltman for all his faults brought trillion dollar NLP systems to reality by sheer ability to raise capital.
Everyone believes if things go south Musk can raise another Trillion somehow. And honestly I wouldn't bet against the guy.
(Not that I agree this is right)
This is a bitcoin stock market. Things are valued entirely based on what others are willing to buy for. They are not valued based on any attribute of the underlying asset. Exactly like bitcoin, it's whim and whimsy which is driving prices.
It's group gambling at this point. Everyone is betting that there won't be a run on the market.
Given the IPO, I suspect they're hitting the wall with regards to new starlink signups, and SpaceX is done growing.
SpaceX has $6.6B adjusted EBITDA, which, at a premium multiplier would probably put it somewhere around 80-150 billion as a company.
For example, the Australian government has selected Project Kepler (now called Amazon Leo) to provide broadband services to the Australian Outback.
https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/...
And geopolitical shenanigans in Ukraine with Musk and Starlink means that it may not be a reliable partner.
SpaceX was launching a modest % of the LEO constellation but after the Blue Origin failure, SpaceX is the only launch provider who can fill that gap and actually let LEO deliver on contracted time.
Please don't misunderstand me, I'm no Musk sycophant though I do love SpaceX and Starlink. I want us to have multiple providers of super cheap space launch capabilities and multiple diverse LEO satellite constellations (3-4 on a global scale makes sense I think?).
I'm sure BlueOrigin will get there some day and I'm sure LEO will get there too (maybe even in the 2028 window if they expand their SpaceX launch partnership).
I'm very happy for SpaceX's success but a monopoly on space launch capacity benefits nobody, SpaceX included.
When COVID hit, I knew a lot of engineers who decided to move to rural areas / small farms, because they could leverage Starlink to work remotely.
Last year, when I asked whether they still liked Starlink, all of them said it was amazing, but they had gotten fiber coverage in their area from a local provider, so they don't use it anymore, or just use it as a backup.
I think Starlink was a huge demand signal that there were people willing to pay a premium for faster-than-radio internet. So, unless they manage to be cheaper and faster than fiber, I don't think there is much of an endgame there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
> Falcon 9 first-stage boosters have been landed and recovered 616 times out of 629 attempts, including synchronized recoveries of the side-boosters of most Falcon Heavy flights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
How are you valuating SpaceX?
SpaceX has more future upside than any company I can think of…
Reusable rockets will change the economics of space travel beyond recognition. Jevon’s paradox will strike hard and fast. Starlink is the initial proof of this.
Maybe Starship will be the first to achieve the fabled dream of rapid reusability. Maybe not. Either way, it’s a tractable engineering problem at this point and the path has been made pretty clear.
I have no idea what the valuation of SpaceX should be. But, in general, I’d bet a lot on the launch industry growing enormously in the coming decades.
Nobody is making a profit in space. Not even Starlink. Once you add in the costs of sustaining their constellation, it barely scrapes by into profitability by underestimating launch costs and an over optimistic projection of future costs.
Starlink can't serve more than a small fraction of an urban population because each bird has a pretty low capacity limit, and terrestrial wireless keeps chipping away at their TAM out in the countryside. Terrestrial wireless infrastructure has a track record of declining costs. The rate at which it eats up the customers Starlink is counting on accelerates.
xAI is burning through a tremendous amount of money.
it is getting propped up right now through leasing compute to Anthropic, which isn't really AI sector profitability. even if the AI bubble doesn't collapse, Anthropic is unlikely to want to keep shovelling money at its competitor.
and right now the xAI+x business segment is getting propped up by a couple billion a year in sustainable revenue from social media, making it look better than it should.
the core SpaceX/Starlink business itself looks pretty amazing and could probably justify $600B-$1T valuations, having roughly comparable financials to something like Visa, particularly if you removed the Starship development costs. but to say xAI is a boat anchor is probably being overly charitable... like if your boat anchor was a supertanker that was sinking into the abyss.