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Comment by jeltz | Hacker News Reader

Their satellite internet business is the only thing which makes them money, which is enabled by their orbital launch business which is as of right now not profitable and I have no idea of if it ever will be but without it they would not be able to launch enough satellites.

Their stupidity with AI and buying X mostly seems to be about scamming investors to make Musk even richer. Like this particular deal is just them doing what CoreWeave does at a SpaceX valuation.

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Launch isn't profitable simply because ongoing Starship R&D is eating into it. A lot of opex, capex, and pre-revenue.

If they start running Starship anywhere near the way they do Falcon 9, it'll flip into profits. A lot of big bets SpaceX made ride on Starship coming online. I'm honestly surprised Starlink is already so profitable without it.

One of their big named bets includes: orbital datacenters. Which puts this specific deal into perspective.

80% of the space launch business is putting starlink satellites into orbit, so it's all internal funny money. They could very well be letting the space launch business take losses to make the satellite internet business look better (only profitable part of the whole thing).

Wasn't starship supposed to be funded by the NASA contract?

Orbital datacenters sound like a dangerous bet. I couldn't think of a worse place for a lot of delecate electronics.

Have you considered Magma Chamber datacenters?

Boomers and luddites won't let them be built on earth so no other option really

It's more unpopular than that. Not surprising since they're competing underhandedly for electricity generation with everyone else.

Well it would be a lot easier if those companies wanted to build them in uninhabited areas in the middle of nowhere with no infrastructure. Somehow they don't want to do that...

I can understand this being a move to increase valuation, but I can't connect with the stupidity and scamming investors argument.

Sorry, I was unclear. With that I did not talk about this particular deal. This particular deal seems sane. XAI built more compute that they can use themselves since Grok is not very successful so to not just have the hardware standing there they rent it out to competitors. Makes total sense.

It is other things Musk has gone with Twitter and SpaceX which are shady.

I'm pretty sure xAI is just Musk throwing a tantrum after being played for a fool by Lying Sam.

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