11 ms·

SpaceX Sells 10% Stake to Google, Fidelity for $1B

339 points by hodgesmr 12y ago

bronz 12y ago
Before anyone mentions that Satellites can only deliver inferior internet service, previous threads have taught us that with low earth orbit satellites latency is not a problem.
- foobarqux 12y ago
  Satcom data rates and reliability are definitely going to be inferior to fixed lines and I assume terrestrial wireless.
  - rst 12y ago
    Depends what market you're targeting. Google's "Project Loon" (data delivery from antennas stationed on high-altitude blimps) was explicitly targeted at third-world areas without much on-the-ground infrastructure.
  - krschultz 12y ago
    But crappy sat network is better than no network. If I can build a log cabin 1000 miles from anywhere and access HN, or log into HN from my sailboat offshore, I will finally be able to never be productive from anywhere.
    - foobarqux 12y ago
      Yes, obviously. The same is true of high latency networks, but that wasn't the point of the grandparent.
    - deeviant 12y ago
      Yeah it should open out a whole new segment to consumer markets. Free(but very slow) ad supported internet every where on earth. Connection to the cloud for a million different kind of Internet-Of-Things class devices. I think this is pretty big as these devices consume very little data, but generally have issues getting connectively at all in some the more remote areas these things tend to get deployed. Think ocean current mappers, artic ice melting detectors, or a multitude of geo-sensors that would love to have a connection in extremely remote areas. Satellite-based emergency beacon in every phone? Slow but usable internet for remote villages. Pushing news, weather, education materials. Perhaps combined with solar power One Laptop Per Child class devices.
      - ergzay 12y ago
        He's already stated that it won't be free and that the consumer base stations (using phased array antennas) will run from $100 to $300.
        deeviant 12y ago
        Free is subjective. They won't be free, but Google could subsidize stations and add ads. IoT companies can create through own hardware and pay bulk rates. Cellphone companies certainly have the option to get on the boat too, if the hardware necessary to communicate to satellites is small enough to go in a smart phone, as have the option to make an emergency call(or most likely SMS/Email) nearly anywhere in the world is a pretty killer feature.
- devindotcom 12y ago
  Plus, inferior/high-latency is fine if it's global. I'm guessing people won't generally be trying to play Call of Duty on these universal links, but rather getting essential services like wikipedia, email, etc.
  - carbocation 12y ago
    The latency is like 11ms. It's not going to substantially worsen my COD ping.
    - throwaway90999 12y ago
      No, the latency for traditional satellite internet is between 600ms to 1000ms (one full second). Cite: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/satellite-internet-faster-than-advertised-but-latency-still-awful/#p3n http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/satell...
      - apendleton 12y ago
        The whole point of the original comment is that these are LEO satellites, rather than the geosynchronous satellites in use for previous internet service. These won't be traditional; they'll be about a thirtieth as far away.
        throwaway90999 12y ago
        There were mentions of both technologies and I was replying to devindotcom who was talking about how high latency satellites are still useful. Here's a link to that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920059 That is why I was careful to specify traditional satellite internet services. It appears the distinction was lost.
      - Crito 12y ago
        That article is about satellite internet using geostationary satellites. Those satellites are as much as 200 times farther away than satellites in LEO. 22,236 miles up, opposed to LEO which starts at about 100 miles up.
- Cogito 12y ago
  Down thread there are a lot of numbers thrown about, some slightly wrong or only in miles, so let me summarise them! The values are taken mostly from wikipedia, with some data double checked against [1] Low Earth Orbit (LEO) altitude: 160 to 2,000 kilometers (99 to 1,200 miles) orbital period: ~88 to ~127 minutes latency: 20 to 40 msecs Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) altitude: 42,164 km (26,199 mi) orbital period: 1 day (approximately 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds) latency: 240 milliseconds [1] http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall99/Coffey/INDEX.HTM http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall99/Coffey/INDEX.HTM
  - benihana 12y ago
    So if the orbital period is about an hour and a half to two hours, does that mean that you can expect to hold on to a single satellite's signal for about 40-50 minutes? Longer? I wonder how much power a cell phone will have to use to track a satellite that's moving through the sky - if the tracking will dominate power usage, or sending and receiving the signal will and we won't see much change. I wonder how this will be different (if at all) from GEO satellites when it's cloudy. Could you presumably find a satellite near the horizon to use to bypass the clouds?
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      The magic words are 'phased array antennae'.
    - azernik 12y ago
      Much less - these satellites are low, so you're not going to have line-of-sight for anything near half the orbital period. Not sure about the precise numbers, but I know Iridium was really challenged by the requirement for clients to roam between satellites on the order of once a minute. As they demonstrated, though, it's a solvable problem.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mtrpcic 12y ago
This is very exciting. While Google might have strayed from their original "Don't be evil" mantra a little bit, I couldn't think of a better partner for SpaceX to work with on this. Not only does Google have the drive and deep pockets, they've got the incentive. If this works out as well as everyone is hoping, not only will it upset the internet industry, I can see this having benefits for the telco/cell carrier industry as well. With cheap, fast internet available worldwide, nobody is going to pay $30 for a 2GB cap on their mobile phones.
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  > While Google might have strayed from their original "Don't be evil" mantra a little bit I don't know. I'm getting more and more the impression that Page is cut from the same cloth like Elon Musk. Both seem to be balls-to-the-walls visionaries who accept nothing less than the utmost limits of what's possible - and then aim a bit higher than that. I'm starting to think that, for Page, "evil" means "anything less than the greatest possible good for the largest number of people, over a very long term".
  - freehunter 12y ago
    But the thing that makes it hard for some people to believe is not the long term vision, but the short term actions. Musk isn't really doing anything that people could call harmful. However, there are a lot of people who would disagree with that if you said the same thing about Google.
    - SethMurphy 12y ago
      'Harmful' is a pretty strong word. No longer the underdog and dominating in business issues related to search maybe, but I have a hard time seeing how this cause harm in any tangible way. Do you have some examples of how a lot of people might find Google to be causing harm?
      - freehunter 12y ago
        Google has been known to connect to wifi hotspots without permission using their mapping cars. Not only did they connect to people's wifi, they also took dumps of any unencrypted data they happened to find while they were connecting. They only got rid of the data after a lawsuit forced them to. They had terrible privacy settings on Google Buzz, letting anyone you had any email conversations find out where you've checked in to. They're the only mobile OS maker who will not put a proper update system in place, leaving millions of their users without patches. Google is unapologetic about this, even going as far to say 4.4.4 is out of support and users should upgrade to 5, even though most Android handsets are incapable of upgrading. Serious security flaws exist in older versions, and the systems will never be patched. Let's talk about the anti-poaching agreement they had, hurting not only their staff, but all of IT in general. Google is the only huge company I know of that still believes it is a startup that can get away with anything, including breaking the law. I have nothing against the people at Google, they do amazing things. But the company needs to learn the value of corporate responsibility sooner rather than later.
apaprocki 12y ago
I find it fascinating that through the business lens, Google is competing with Facebook to sell more ads by going into low earth orbit. We didn't get flying cars like they promised in the Jetsons, but that sounds pretty futuristic.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  While this is something Google earns most its money on, I don't think it's the sole reason for its actions, nor that it wants to stay in that business forever.
  - JustinJBM 12y ago
    "Selling ads" puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about. More information, more organization, more people online, more ads :)
    - grey 12y ago
      I think Google has shown they're trying very hard to become a primary infrastructure host for any business in "The Cloud", getting more people online opens up new opportunities there too
    - nlh 12y ago
      Well, yes, but there's an argument to be made that while your cycle is certainly correct, the starting and ending points aren't necessarily fixed. Why not: More ads -> more $$ -> more information -> more organization -> more people online (and, thus, more freedom, more intelligence, etc.)
    - Florin_Andrei 12y ago
      > "Selling ads" puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about. By the same token, you're a machine that transforms food and oxygen into excrement and CO2. That puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about - if you judge things at that level. What I mean is - selling ads is what keeps their "corporate metabolism" going, but the actual long-term goals of the founders might be (and, indeed, are) very different from that most basic of all levels.
ihsw 12y ago
Traveling to Mars will now require a Google+ account.
- maaaats 12y ago
  And if something break down while there, it is no way to get support.
walru 12y ago
Once, long ago, I thought Google would have bought Radio Shack and installed wireless network hubs in all ~5000 of them to bring internet to the masses. I guess this is a subsequent option. That said, on the verge of bankruptcy, Radio Shack currently only has a Market Cap of 25MM.
- elberto34 12y ago
  but the debt...market cap is meaningless in these situations
  - walru 12y ago
    You know, I was going to add a bit about the debt, but I knew this comment was off topic enough/ I couldn't advocate an actual purchase now, but at one point it seemed interesting. I just wasn't thinking big enough.
gaius 12y ago
So let me get this straight... SpaceX is worth half of WhatsApp? Does anyone else feel like they're living in Bizarro-world?
- wuliwong 12y ago
  This is what I wondered too. I think there must be something we are missing. SpaceX has 3,000 employees and tons of capital equipment. They have contracts worth billions of dollars and loads of proprietary technology? I thought they were already profitable? But is that incorrect? It would seem disingenuous to claim that they lowered the price of space travel by 90% if they actually weren't even breaking even? hahahha.
  - robotresearcher 12y ago
    The investors also believe that their 10% stake is worth more than $1B. That's why they invested. Maybe SpaceX could have got more. But at this valuation they closed the deal and now have $1B to play with. Both parties happy.
- _pferreir_ 12y ago
  Yeah. That seems to be the case.
- stdbrouw 12y ago
  Same reason diamonds are worth more than water.
  - wuliwong 12y ago
    Unless you are stranded on a desert island of course.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    SpaceX is water and whatsapp is diamonds?
- Tossrock 12y ago
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Does that mean 100% of SpaceX is currently worth $10B? Isn't that surprisingly low? I know nothing about these sorts of things, so sorry if that's a stupid question.
- tsotha 12y ago
  No, you're right. That's the math.
- cperciva 12y ago
  This sounds about right to me. If they're successful they'll be worth a lot more, but they're only a couple exploding rockets away from being worth nothing at all.
- simonh 12y ago
  Google must think Spacex is worth more than $10bn or they probably wouldn't invest in it. Right now SpaceX stock is not publicly traded so we have no idea how much it would be worth if it were priced to market. A lot of people are comparing this to Whatsapp. But Whatsapp wasn't publicly traded either. All we can say is that Mark Zuckerberg thought Whatsapp was worth at least $20bn to him and 10% of Spacex is worth at least $1bn to Google. How much they might be worth to other people is unknown.
sandstrom 12y ago
There is this fairly sparse press-release on the SpaceX website: Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has raised a billion dollars in a financing round with two new investors, Google and Fidelity. They join existing investors Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn. Google and Fidelity will collectively own just under 10% of the company. SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches the world's most advanced rockets and spacecraft. This funding will be used to support continued innovation in the areas of space transport, reusability, and satellite manufacturing. http://www.spacex.com/press/2015/01/20/financing-round http://www.spacex.com/press/2015/01/20/financing-round
james33 12y ago
I feel like in the long run this could be one of Google's best investments to date.
BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
At $10B, SpaceX is beyond undervalued. Think about it this way, if they truly are the first company to start laying claim to mineral deposits (or provide service to whatever govt does lay claim) on asteroids, satellites like the Moon, and other planets the amount of value in this company - even over the upcoming centuries - is going to be greater than the East India Company, General Electric, or Apple ever where. Now that's an investment well worth leaving to our kids.
- stevenjohns 12y ago
  I'm sure that once they actually begin to do any of those things that their valuation will increase.
- aetherson 12y ago
  No, "laying claim" to mineral deposits not on Earth is valueless. Even if, in a rather fanciful world, said claim was in some way legally enforceable. "Having technology able to recover said deposits and deliver them to an area of meaningful economic activity without costing several multiples of the value (or, more realistically, several thousand multiples of the value) of the minerals in question" would certainly justify a very high valuation for SpaceX. But they do not have such technology, and it is far from clear that they are on the path to having that technology anytime soon. And nothing has much present value today based on its prospective value in centuries. In 100 years, we could be superintelligent nanotech swarms. Or extinct. Or anything in between. Only a fool would place much certainty on the value of a mineral deposit that far out.
  - beambot 12y ago
    I imagine it would be difficult for earth-based entities to enforce jurisdiction in far space. If you already have possession of an asteroid, it doesn't seem like there's much terrestrial governments could do shy of import tariffs. And whomever holds to material has one massive advantage in terms of MAD: they're sitting high up in the gravity well. Certainly SpaceX has an air of "tool builders" about them -- they'll build the shovels and pick axes of the space economy. As evidenced by their current economic successes, they're banking on the evolution of the industry -- not a quantum leap 100 years hence. A great (related) scifi novel: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein
jacquesm 12y ago
Google's next internet broadband distribution project: Leon.
ourmandave 12y ago
Maybe SpaceX can use the Google Barges for landing platforms?

339 points by hodgesmr 12y ago

bronz 12y ago

Before anyone mentions that Satellites can only deliver inferior internet service, previous threads have taught us that with low earth orbit satellites latency is not a problem.

foobarqux 12y ago
Satcom data rates and reliability are definitely going to be inferior to fixed lines and I assume terrestrial wireless.
- rst 12y ago
  Depends what market you're targeting. Google's "Project Loon" (data delivery from antennas stationed on high-altitude blimps) was explicitly targeted at third-world areas without much on-the-ground infrastructure.
- krschultz 12y ago
  But crappy sat network is better than no network. If I can build a log cabin 1000 miles from anywhere and access HN, or log into HN from my sailboat offshore, I will finally be able to never be productive from anywhere.
  - foobarqux 12y ago
    Yes, obviously. The same is true of high latency networks, but that wasn't the point of the grandparent.
  - deeviant 12y ago
    Yeah it should open out a whole new segment to consumer markets. Free(but very slow) ad supported internet every where on earth. Connection to the cloud for a million different kind of Internet-Of-Things class devices. I think this is pretty big as these devices consume very little data, but generally have issues getting connectively at all in some the more remote areas these things tend to get deployed. Think ocean current mappers, artic ice melting detectors, or a multitude of geo-sensors that would love to have a connection in extremely remote areas. Satellite-based emergency beacon in every phone? Slow but usable internet for remote villages. Pushing news, weather, education materials. Perhaps combined with solar power One Laptop Per Child class devices.
    - ergzay 12y ago
      He's already stated that it won't be free and that the consumer base stations (using phased array antennas) will run from $100 to $300.
      - deeviant 12y ago
        Free is subjective. They won't be free, but Google could subsidize stations and add ads. IoT companies can create through own hardware and pay bulk rates. Cellphone companies certainly have the option to get on the boat too, if the hardware necessary to communicate to satellites is small enough to go in a smart phone, as have the option to make an emergency call(or most likely SMS/Email) nearly anywhere in the world is a pretty killer feature.
devindotcom 12y ago
Plus, inferior/high-latency is fine if it's global. I'm guessing people won't generally be trying to play Call of Duty on these universal links, but rather getting essential services like wikipedia, email, etc.
- carbocation 12y ago
  The latency is like 11ms. It's not going to substantially worsen my COD ping.
  - throwaway90999 12y ago
    No, the latency for traditional satellite internet is between 600ms to 1000ms (one full second). Cite: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/satellite-internet-faster-than-advertised-but-latency-still-awful/#p3n http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/satell...
    - apendleton 12y ago
      The whole point of the original comment is that these are LEO satellites, rather than the geosynchronous satellites in use for previous internet service. These won't be traditional; they'll be about a thirtieth as far away.
      - throwaway90999 12y ago
        There were mentions of both technologies and I was replying to devindotcom who was talking about how high latency satellites are still useful. Here's a link to that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920059 That is why I was careful to specify traditional satellite internet services. It appears the distinction was lost.
    - Crito 12y ago
      That article is about satellite internet using geostationary satellites. Those satellites are as much as 200 times farther away than satellites in LEO. 22,236 miles up, opposed to LEO which starts at about 100 miles up.
Cogito 12y ago
Down thread there are a lot of numbers thrown about, some slightly wrong or only in miles, so let me summarise them! The values are taken mostly from wikipedia, with some data double checked against [1] Low Earth Orbit (LEO) altitude: 160 to 2,000 kilometers (99 to 1,200 miles) orbital period: ~88 to ~127 minutes latency: 20 to 40 msecs Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) altitude: 42,164 km (26,199 mi) orbital period: 1 day (approximately 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds) latency: 240 milliseconds [1] http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall99/Coffey/INDEX.HTM http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall99/Coffey/INDEX.HTM
- benihana 12y ago
  So if the orbital period is about an hour and a half to two hours, does that mean that you can expect to hold on to a single satellite's signal for about 40-50 minutes? Longer? I wonder how much power a cell phone will have to use to track a satellite that's moving through the sky - if the tracking will dominate power usage, or sending and receiving the signal will and we won't see much change. I wonder how this will be different (if at all) from GEO satellites when it's cloudy. Could you presumably find a satellite near the horizon to use to bypass the clouds?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    The magic words are 'phased array antennae'.
  - azernik 12y ago
    Much less - these satellites are low, so you're not going to have line-of-sight for anything near half the orbital period. Not sure about the precise numbers, but I know Iridium was really challenged by the requirement for clients to roam between satellites on the order of once a minute. As they demonstrated, though, it's a solvable problem.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mtrpcic 12y ago

This is very exciting. While Google might have strayed from their original "Don't be evil" mantra a little bit, I couldn't think of a better partner for SpaceX to work with on this. Not only does Google have the drive and deep pockets, they've got the incentive. If this works out as well as everyone is hoping, not only will it upset the internet industry, I can see this having benefits for the telco/cell carrier industry as well. With cheap, fast internet available worldwide, nobody is going to pay $30 for a 2GB cap on their mobile phones.

Florin_Andrei 12y ago
> While Google might have strayed from their original "Don't be evil" mantra a little bit I don't know. I'm getting more and more the impression that Page is cut from the same cloth like Elon Musk. Both seem to be balls-to-the-walls visionaries who accept nothing less than the utmost limits of what's possible - and then aim a bit higher than that. I'm starting to think that, for Page, "evil" means "anything less than the greatest possible good for the largest number of people, over a very long term".
- freehunter 12y ago
  But the thing that makes it hard for some people to believe is not the long term vision, but the short term actions. Musk isn't really doing anything that people could call harmful. However, there are a lot of people who would disagree with that if you said the same thing about Google.
  - SethMurphy 12y ago
    'Harmful' is a pretty strong word. No longer the underdog and dominating in business issues related to search maybe, but I have a hard time seeing how this cause harm in any tangible way. Do you have some examples of how a lot of people might find Google to be causing harm?
    - freehunter 12y ago
      Google has been known to connect to wifi hotspots without permission using their mapping cars. Not only did they connect to people's wifi, they also took dumps of any unencrypted data they happened to find while they were connecting. They only got rid of the data after a lawsuit forced them to. They had terrible privacy settings on Google Buzz, letting anyone you had any email conversations find out where you've checked in to. They're the only mobile OS maker who will not put a proper update system in place, leaving millions of their users without patches. Google is unapologetic about this, even going as far to say 4.4.4 is out of support and users should upgrade to 5, even though most Android handsets are incapable of upgrading. Serious security flaws exist in older versions, and the systems will never be patched. Let's talk about the anti-poaching agreement they had, hurting not only their staff, but all of IT in general. Google is the only huge company I know of that still believes it is a startup that can get away with anything, including breaking the law. I have nothing against the people at Google, they do amazing things. But the company needs to learn the value of corporate responsibility sooner rather than later.

apaprocki 12y ago

I find it fascinating that through the business lens, Google is competing with Facebook to sell more ads by going into low earth orbit. We didn't get flying cars like they promised in the Jetsons, but that sounds pretty futuristic.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
While this is something Google earns most its money on, I don't think it's the sole reason for its actions, nor that it wants to stay in that business forever.
- JustinJBM 12y ago
  "Selling ads" puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about. More information, more organization, more people online, more ads :)
  - grey 12y ago
    I think Google has shown they're trying very hard to become a primary infrastructure host for any business in "The Cloud", getting more people online opens up new opportunities there too
  - nlh 12y ago
    Well, yes, but there's an argument to be made that while your cycle is certainly correct, the starting and ending points aren't necessarily fixed. Why not: More ads -> more $$ -> more information -> more organization -> more people online (and, thus, more freedom, more intelligence, etc.)
  - Florin_Andrei 12y ago
    > "Selling ads" puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about. By the same token, you're a machine that transforms food and oxygen into excrement and CO2. That puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about - if you judge things at that level. What I mean is - selling ads is what keeps their "corporate metabolism" going, but the actual long-term goals of the founders might be (and, indeed, are) very different from that most basic of all levels.

ihsw 12y ago

Traveling to Mars will now require a Google+ account.

maaaats 12y ago
And if something break down while there, it is no way to get support.

walru 12y ago

Once, long ago, I thought Google would have bought Radio Shack and installed wireless network hubs in all ~5000 of them to bring internet to the masses. I guess this is a subsequent option. That said, on the verge of bankruptcy, Radio Shack currently only has a Market Cap of 25MM.

elberto34 12y ago
but the debt...market cap is meaningless in these situations
- walru 12y ago
  You know, I was going to add a bit about the debt, but I knew this comment was off topic enough/ I couldn't advocate an actual purchase now, but at one point it seemed interesting. I just wasn't thinking big enough.

gaius 12y ago

So let me get this straight... SpaceX is worth half of WhatsApp? Does anyone else feel like they're living in Bizarro-world?

wuliwong 12y ago
This is what I wondered too. I think there must be something we are missing. SpaceX has 3,000 employees and tons of capital equipment. They have contracts worth billions of dollars and loads of proprietary technology? I thought they were already profitable? But is that incorrect? It would seem disingenuous to claim that they lowered the price of space travel by 90% if they actually weren't even breaking even? hahahha.
- robotresearcher 12y ago
  The investors also believe that their 10% stake is worth more than $1B. That's why they invested. Maybe SpaceX could have got more. But at this valuation they closed the deal and now have $1B to play with. Both parties happy.
_pferreir_ 12y ago
Yeah. That seems to be the case.
stdbrouw 12y ago
Same reason diamonds are worth more than water.
- wuliwong 12y ago
  Unless you are stranded on a desert island of course.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  SpaceX is water and whatsapp is diamonds?
Tossrock 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Does that mean 100% of SpaceX is currently worth $10B? Isn't that surprisingly low? I know nothing about these sorts of things, so sorry if that's a stupid question.

tsotha 12y ago
No, you're right. That's the math.
cperciva 12y ago
This sounds about right to me. If they're successful they'll be worth a lot more, but they're only a couple exploding rockets away from being worth nothing at all.
simonh 12y ago
Google must think Spacex is worth more than $10bn or they probably wouldn't invest in it. Right now SpaceX stock is not publicly traded so we have no idea how much it would be worth if it were priced to market. A lot of people are comparing this to Whatsapp. But Whatsapp wasn't publicly traded either. All we can say is that Mark Zuckerberg thought Whatsapp was worth at least $20bn to him and 10% of Spacex is worth at least $1bn to Google. How much they might be worth to other people is unknown.

sandstrom 12y ago

There is this fairly sparse press-release on the SpaceX website: Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has raised a billion dollars in a financing round with two new investors, Google and Fidelity. They join existing investors Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn. Google and Fidelity will collectively own just under 10% of the company. SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches the world's most advanced rockets and spacecraft. This funding will be used to support continued innovation in the areas of space transport, reusability, and satellite manufacturing. http://www.spacex.com/press/2015/01/20/financing-round http://www.spacex.com/press/2015/01/20/financing-round

james33 12y ago

I feel like in the long run this could be one of Google's best investments to date.

BigChiefSmokem 12y ago

At $10B, SpaceX is beyond undervalued. Think about it this way, if they truly are the first company to start laying claim to mineral deposits (or provide service to whatever govt does lay claim) on asteroids, satellites like the Moon, and other planets the amount of value in this company - even over the upcoming centuries - is going to be greater than the East India Company, General Electric, or Apple ever where. Now that's an investment well worth leaving to our kids.

stevenjohns 12y ago
I'm sure that once they actually begin to do any of those things that their valuation will increase.
aetherson 12y ago
No, "laying claim" to mineral deposits not on Earth is valueless. Even if, in a rather fanciful world, said claim was in some way legally enforceable. "Having technology able to recover said deposits and deliver them to an area of meaningful economic activity without costing several multiples of the value (or, more realistically, several thousand multiples of the value) of the minerals in question" would certainly justify a very high valuation for SpaceX. But they do not have such technology, and it is far from clear that they are on the path to having that technology anytime soon. And nothing has much present value today based on its prospective value in centuries. In 100 years, we could be superintelligent nanotech swarms. Or extinct. Or anything in between. Only a fool would place much certainty on the value of a mineral deposit that far out.
- beambot 12y ago
  I imagine it would be difficult for earth-based entities to enforce jurisdiction in far space. If you already have possession of an asteroid, it doesn't seem like there's much terrestrial governments could do shy of import tariffs. And whomever holds to material has one massive advantage in terms of MAD: they're sitting high up in the gravity well. Certainly SpaceX has an air of "tool builders" about them -- they'll build the shovels and pick axes of the space economy. As evidenced by their current economic successes, they're banking on the evolution of the industry -- not a quantum leap 100 years hence. A great (related) scifi novel: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein

jacquesm 12y ago

Google's next internet broadband distribution project: Leon.

ourmandave 12y ago

Maybe SpaceX can use the Google Barges for landing platforms?