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Comment by ctrlkctrls | Hacker News Reader

Judging by Elon's staggering success in all of his ventures I'd say you're out of touch.

Multiple things can be true at once, he can be wildly successful while also undermining democracy.

Think we all can agree he has had staggering successes, but they have all come from having massive capital from Paypal which wasn't anything super innovative, it just solved a convenient problem at a convenient time and was awarded handsomely. Elon has put his capital to work in various ways to become successful, not all of the ways being morally sound.

He has had many failures, SolarCity and xAI and X and DOGE to name a few, but he has often bailed them out with his larger ventures.

Even with his successes (Tesla, SpaceX) he has built them up in large part by bending levers of government to his advantage.

> Even with his successes (Tesla, SpaceX) he has built them up in large part by bending levers of government to his advantage.

So what? Thats called being a maverick. He is very very good at executing on making money which is the point of business.

> He is very very good at executing on making money which is the point of business.

Also pushing technology forward.

xAI is the most profitable part of SpaceX by far.

About half of SpaceX revenue is Starlink subscriptions. Starlink is the one profitable division; the rest of the company operates at a loss, including xAI.

That's outdated and doesn't fully include the multiple billion per month contracts.

Anthropic: 1.25B/month

Google: 0.92B/month

Unnamed customer starting in december: 1.1B/month

Starlink monthly revenue is ~1.5B/month

Isn't this to rent the datacenters though? That's not really long term revenue if xAI will eventually need them back.

Renting datacenters is their mission, now on earth and later in space (assuming they deliver).

I don't know that's moving the goalpost, SpaceX's mission was not that originally. Some could say the original mission failed and they are pivoting, Elon will say it's a means to the end of the original mission still to save face. Some read it all as snake oil

I take issue with your use of the word "bend" here.

Can you provide specific examples of where Elon has bent the levers of government?

What failed with X? Usage today is higher than ever

Brand reputation; ROI; grok the sexual harassment bot; grok the CSAM bot; his free speech absolutism position. Take your pick.

Not to mention the clearest indication of all, revenues: https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/spacex-...

You mean because he inherited wealth? sure, that's what most losers do

All except Starlink and Tesla are burning money. I personally don't consider that "staggering success."

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