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SpaceX to Invest $2B into Elon Musk's XAI
- TheAlchemist 1y agoFor those paying attention, Elon's companies are running out of money and he's trying to save them by shifting cash from one to another. No doubt that Tesla will also be paying for 'Grok integration' into cars. PS. For those about to write that Tesla has 30B in cash - it would be a very nice runaway for a small company, but when you are a carmaker employing 100k people and producing cars that are not selling, that cash pile burns really quickly.
- adastra22 1y agoIs SX running out of money? They will be if they keep doing this, but I was under the impression they were still insanely profitable.
- TheAlchemist 1y agoReally hard to know - as the numbers are not public, it's all guestimates. Musk said in late 2023 that they achieved 'breakeven cash flow', but Bloomberg reported that they were actually loosing money on ground terminals. It's also a lot of accounting game - Starlink satellites have a really short lifespan and will need to be replaced on a regular basis. SpaceX being a private company, there is no way to know how they account for that. As for launches - most of their launches are for... themselves (Starlink) and quite a lot of the rest is for government / military - which are partly classified.
- Zigurd 1y agoA few years ago, Musk said that if Starship isn't putting next generation Starlink satellites into orbit, SpaceX will go bankrupt. 5G FWA is eating away at the edges of Starlink's TAM, which makes delays even more expensive.
- Proofread0592 1y agoThe SpaceX investment is especially problematic as SpaceX has gotten $22bn government contract dollars. So depending on what money he is moving, taxpayers may be footing the bill for Grok development.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoThey have also saved the govt over $100B compared to paying Russia and Boeing etc.
- merman 1y agoAre you aware that many companies receive billions in government contracts, and why are you concerned about this and not others e.g. amazon, MSFT, etc
- bigyabai 1y agoPersonally, I don't care because AWS and Azure are both extremely profitable without federal contracts. XAI is the dictionary definition of a blue-chip nothingburger. Nobody wants their tax dollars going towards the bailout of an AI company that can't compete on merits alone. It's a dilution of SpaceX's valuation, if nothing else.
- merman 1y agoAh, so your premise is SX is unprofitable without federal contracts! and that the SOTA model, which was released before this investment, can’t “compete”
- RestlessMind 1y agoI think the real underlying premise is that Elon is unhinged, cannot be trusted and just makes stuff up. Self driving Teslas were going to launch "next year" since 2017. DOGE was going to find 1-2T dollars worth of waste in our budgets. Thai rescue diver was a pedophile. etc. For all I know, SOTA model can be a copy with some additive work on Claude or OpenAI models.
- bigyabai 1y agoThus undoing hundreds of billions of dollars vis-a-vis risk management in space.
- ai_critic 1y agoIt will be as impressive as it is shortsighted if we throw away a strong lead in space (at least the US chunk of it) due at least partially to political feuding and populism. I do wish the fellow had stuck with the boring (hah) business of space colonies and robot cars instead of getting sidetracked and baited with other stuff.
- tonetheman 1y ago[dead]
- merman 1y agoIs there any opportunity to integrate or leverage starlink with AI?