Posted by leopoldj 3 hours ago
Tesla was a great ride if you got in early but long-term from this point on if you had any significant amount of money, why would you buy them now? Unless you like sleepless nights…
And that's basically what SpaceX is right now after you account for xAI and twitter in the mix.
So I'd love to own a piece of the SpaceX from a decade ago - but the current offering smells pretty bad.
Combined with the fact that at this point, Musk clearly isn't opposed to running a business with dramatically inflated valuations based on vaporware, lies, & hype (cough - Tesla - cough) it just makes me far more skeptical than I might otherwise be.
I think caution is warranted here.
Essentially - I want to own the SpaceX that could have been if we didn't end up with the shoddy k-hole version of musk in charge of things.
I don't think anyone is really arguing these particular points.
>And they are just now picking up steam. American Airlines just signed onto Starlink just last week. This company is most likely gonna be the Coca-Cola of transportation between celestial bodies in solar system for the next 500 years but people on here are arguing over peanuts. On HN of all places.
This is speculation based on SpaceX's trajectory to this point, however we've seen Musk make some decisions that bring the long term future prospects of SpaceX into question. While Musk remains unbeholden to anyone else, which an IPO doesn't change, he's the biggest risk factor in the equation - and that's not speculation, it's an objective assessment of what's possible within the corporate structure of SpaceX.
What's subjective is whether you anticipate Musk will add more trash to the pile. Was the Twitter/xAI acquisition by SpaceX, with it's stupidly obvious fraudulent valuations, an outlier of some kind? Or was it a predictor of future actions that put similar economic strain on SpaceX, and would affect it's future stability and economic viability? Since Musk is capable of crashing and burning the whole of SpaceX by himself, without anyone legally capable of vetoing his decisions, it's a valid line of questioning.
Personally I feel I've seen enough of how Musk operates that I can be confident he'll make similar decisions in the future, and that makes me consider SpaceX a high risk investment. I'm also far from alone in this assessment, and there's a valid concern from investors of those index funds about being railroaded into adding SpaceX to their mix.
This brief dalliance in private enterprise in space will not last long-term.
(not to say that isn't a huge risk if it disappeared, it's just far from "completely dependent")
It's variable though, and if DoD decides it wants a bunch of spy satellites or whatnot in orbit, you could see the percentage growing, along with their total revenue ofc.
It's just far from "completely dependent" which was my only objection.
Starlink obviously a huge part - $11½b revenue in 2025.
If anything - as an investor I'd call those core concerns about how I'll make my money back.
Further... this company isn't actually making ANY DAMN MONEY. Of the bundled orgs, only Starlink is profitable, and not profitable enough to offset the losses on spaceX and xAI/Grok. (starlink +4b, spacex -700mm, xAI -6b = -2.7b..., with 30b in debt).
So... no... right now this company is not "Coca-Cola". And that delusional comparison is part of why I think it's correct to be wary right now. On a scale between Enron and Coke... I'd wager we're closer to Enron.
I'll pick up some shares by default given the ETFs I'm in anyways, and that's enough for me...
They didn't say they didn't want to own it, they said they wanted to own it at a : "90% discount after the IPO and the next tech / AI correction."
It is possible for a company to be both technically impressive and horrifically overvalued.
Something about finding out who's swimming naked once the tide goes out
The funny part of all this is that SpaceX has achieved a lot but what might break them, or at least weigh them down heavily, is the impulsive and forced purchase of Twitter. Before anyone claims it was some kind of master plan, Elon went to court to get out of it but was forced into it [1].
What happened? Mass firings, pushing his own tweets because his fragile ego couldn't handle Joe Biden getting more likes [2] and Twitter opened the floodgates for hate speech [3] and worse [4]. Advertisers fled. Fidelity (who foolishly was part of the acquisition) massively wrote down the value [5]. Elon had used Tesla shares as collateral and was possibly facing a margin call.
How did he get out of it? Well, in 2023 Elon founded xAI to challenge OpenAI. People invested in this for some reason. And by 2025, Elon merged Twitter with xAI, overvaluing Twitter at $33 billion (which is still down 25% from the purchase) [6].
Now, I imagine the xAI investors were unhappy with Elon using xAI to bail out himself so what did he do? Easy. Make SpaceX acquire xAI of course [7].
Thing is, xAI and Twitter/Grok are a massive drain on SpaceX's finances, losing more than $10 billion annually allegedly [8].
Twitter did not have to end up as part of SpaceX. SpaceX would've been a better company without it. SpaceX already faces headwinds from the incredibly expensive and behind-schedule Starship program. Part of all of this regulatory fixing is to make sure the insiders (and Elon himself) get bailed out.
It's also not the first time [9].
[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/elon-musk-offers-to-end...
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk...
[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/technology/twitter-hate-s...
[4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/27/twitter...
[5]: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/29/fidelity-twitter-x-value-el...
[6]: https://www.fintechweekly.com/magazine/articles/xai-acquires...
[7]: https://www.reuters.com/business/musks-spacex-merge-with-xai...
[8]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/musk-s-xa...
[9]: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/21/13698314/tesla-completes...
1. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/letter-to-spacex-re-ipo-...
It's classic third worldism, made possible by a low-information electorate that not only can't do the math, but lacks instinctual skepticism of the idea of a free lunch. Chicago went down the same path, and found that these gimmicks work until they don't.
Their names are known and are part of history now. Maybe not famous but certainly better than being a forgotten weathered tomb stone after 5 centuries.