Cont: Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla II

[jeremyp]

Why are they describing it as a first. I thought Waymo already have autonomous taxis.

Edit: this is a reply to Darat’s post about Amazon’s offering.

 

[LiteBright]

Tesla's Elon Musk is having a generational meltdown

Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 2026 X posts run from 'Hitler was a socialist' to open white nationalism, and now xAI is suing Minnesota over a deepfake law.

electrek.co

elon musk's white supremacist-y meltdown post economist interview. the economist interview is worth a watch, it gets unhinged pretty often. the economist is also pretty aggressively taking it down but it keeps getting reuploaded to youtube otherwise i'd link it

I watched it last night (economist subscriber) and if there was any doubt that this man is an unhinged lunatic, racist, nutjob, let it be put to rest. He comes off like any other nutter you might run into at a gas station.

Let Musk be the final nail in the coffin of the idea that wealth is a meritocracy.

 

[Darat]

Why are they describing it as a first. I thought Waymo already have autonomous taxis.

Edit: this is a reply to Darat’s post about Amazon’s offering.

It's a general licence for vehicles to act commercially on the public roads that haven't got any user accessible steering mechanism and don't have the usual safety features which have all been compulsory even in the commercially active autonomous taxis.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Ryan Caton
@dpoddolphinpro
NEWS: SpaceX has replaced the Mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles with Tesla Cybertrucks for crew emergency egress at Space Launch Complex-40.

NASA's Richard Jones, Deputy Director, Commercial Crew Office, LEO Program, tells me that the Cybertruck offers a speed advantage over the MRAPs, allowing the astronauts to evacuate the blast danger area faster.

It also frees up the MRAPs, allowing them to be used for other crew vehicles (Orion/SLS, Starliner/Atlas), allowing crew missions in close proximity.

link

 

[jeremyp]

First quarterly report for SpaceX

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-quarterly-revenue-surges-debut-results-strong-growth-its-starlink-2026-08-04/

They doubled revenue compared to a year ago but still made a loss. Of course, a year ago SpaceX was a private company and was not merged with Twitter., so that doesn't mean much.

$1.6 billion of revenue came from leasing of compute capacity to rival AI vendors. That doesn't strike me as being helpful.

Total revenue was around $8 billion which is only twelve times less than Apple and fourteen times less than Google.

 

[Darat]

First quarterly report for SpaceX

...snip...
$1.6 billion of revenue came from leasing of compute capacity to rival AI vendors. That doesn't strike me as being helpful.

And it can disappear instantly as it's pretty much a month to month leasing agreement.

Plus it of course points to another plot hole in his science fiction story, most of the near future profit (< 10 years) for SpaceX is from its own AI so why do they have such spare capacity to lease out to others especially given that Musk said just before he bought Xai that Grok had to be started from scratch?

It's almost as if Musk is writing crappy science fiction and not creating and implementing a long term business strategy.

 

[dirtywick]

https://www.reuters.com/business/spacex-shares-slip-lockup-expiry-adds-post-ipo-woes-2026-08-06/

goes to show you, you never know what's going to happen. spacex holds strong on the day hunreds of millions of additional volume are added to the market. it'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks

 

[jeremyp]

https://www.reuters.com/business/spacex-shares-slip-lockup-expiry-adds-post-ipo-woes-2026-08-06/

goes to show you, you never know what's going to happen. spacex holds strong on the day hunreds of millions of additional volume are added to the market. it'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks

If I were to take a wild guess, I'd say that the first lock up expiry was already priced in and/or fewer of the newly available shares are being traded than expected.

 

[dirtywick]

If I were to take a wild guess, I'd say that the first lock up expiry was already priced in and/or fewer of the newly available shares are being traded than expected.

while it closed up, there was a lot of volatility through the day.

‘Pure insanity’—Elon Musk details SpaceX’s plan to turn the moon into its newest manufacturing site | Fortune

SpaceX’s SEC filings describe lunar satellite factories, electromagnetic launchers, and robotic mineral mining. The founders building space equipment say the science checks out—even if the timeline doesn’t.

fortune.com

meanwhile, elon is now talking about robot factories on the moon. so none of this is very serious

 

[I Am The Scum]

$1.6 billion of revenue came from leasing of compute capacity to rival AI vendors. That doesn't strike me as being helpful.

Can't lose if you bet on all the horses.

 

[a_unique_person]

Can't lose if you bet on all the horses.

The intent for all that compute was to power a very popular and powerful Grok to create paradise on earth and 100X profits. A compute reseller is low margin with the super profits going to the AI owner.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

First quarterly report for SpaceX

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-quarterly-revenue-surges-debut-results-strong-growth-its-starlink-2026-08-04/

They doubled revenue compared to a year ago but still made a loss.

Half the loss. The trajectory is looking good.

$1.6 billion of revenue came from leasing of compute capacity to rival AI vendors. That doesn't strike me as being helpful.

Total revenue was around $8 billion which is only twelve times less than Apple and fourteen times less than Google.

Google’s $185 Billion AI Bet Faces a Two-Pronged Test: Brussels and the Balance Sheet

At its Cloud Next conference, Google Cloud chief Thomas Kurian unveiled a strategic partnership with Apple: Gemini will soon power the architecture behind Siri. The company also announced a $750 million fund to help consulting giants like McKinsey and Deloitte bring agentic AI... CEO Sundar Pichai recently revealed a striking internal metric: artificial intelligence now generates 75 percent of all new code written at Google.

Google has this AI thing sewn up. Musk should throw in the towel and just lease compute from Alphabet.

BTW SpaceX stock price is now $136.85, above the IPO of $135. The lowest was $107.16 on Aug 6.

 

[dirtywick]

why would musk lease compute from google? he’d do better to end the compute he’s leasing to them first

 

[Darat]

Plus it leaves the question of which compute capacity he is using for the training of the new Grok unanswered? According to his comments shortly after selling Xai to himself sorry SpaceX Grok has to be rebuilt from scratch.

 

[dirtywick]

SpaceX’s Earnings Show Elon Wiped Out Two-Thirds Of Twitter’s Ad Business

When SpaceX filed for its IPO, we went through the S-1 to point out just how far off the mark Elon Musk’s predictions about his Twitter takeover turned out to be. Indeed, the failure of Twitt…

www.techdirt.com

spacex earnings show how much ad business twitter lost

Let’s break all this down: In the second quarter of 2022, the last full quarter before Elon took over, Twitter brought in $1.08 billion in ad revenue. In the second quarter of 2026, X brought in $367 million. That’s $713 million a quarter, gone. Elon has wiped out two-thirds of Twitter’s ad business over the exact period in which he promised investors he’d nearly triple it.

 

[jeremyp]

Half the loss. The trajectory is looking good.

Not really. A year ago the company was structured very differently and most of the difference is made up of leasing their compute capacity to their rivals in the AI space.

Google’s $185 Billion AI Bet Faces a Two-Pronged Test: Brussels and the Balance Sheet

Google has this AI thing sewn up. Musk should throw in the towel and just lease compute from Alphabet.

This isn’t about Google, it’s about SpaceX.

BTW SpaceX stock price is now $136.85, above the IPO of $135. The lowest was $107.16 on Aug 6.

The stick prices of Musk companies are very rarely related to reality. Even 107 was ridiculously high based on SpaceX’s actual results.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Elon Musk
@elonmusk

Moonbase Alpha will be so cool.

And we want to make it so that anyone can go to the Moon if they want.

X Freeze
@XFreeze
SpaceX is getting very close to building the first serious base on the Moon

Starship changes the entire equation

It is designed to deliver up to 100 tonnes directly to the lunar surface - enough to transport habitats, rovers, power systems, construction equipment and everything needed to begin building a permanent outpost

Then the other pieces come together

Tesla Optimus robots could eventually unload cargo, assemble structures, move equipment and perform dangerous construction work before large human crews arrive

Building a base mostly with humans is a serious limitation

Humans need life support, pressurized habitats, spacesuits, oxygen, food and protection just to survive and work on the lunar surface

But with Tesla Optimus, that equation changes entirely

Tesla’s experience with solar energy, batteries, autonomous vehicles and large-scale manufacturing can support the power and transportation systems required on the Moon

SpaceX provides transportation

Tesla provides energy, autonomy and robotics

Starship provides the scale

Suddenly building a serious base on the Moon becomes dramatically easier

And once that infrastructure is ready, humans can stay for much longer periods and eventually even routine private lunar missions and tourism become possible

Once the first permanent lunar outpost is established, its usefulness will compound rapidly.....supporting science, resource development, communications and deeper missions into space

The Moon could become humanity’s first true outpost beyond Earth

link

 

[GlennB]

Elon Musk
@elonmusk

Moonbase Alpha will be so cool.

And we want to make it so that anyone can go to the Moon if they want.




View attachment 74484

link

Sure Elon, sure. Time for your meds now ...

 

[Darat]

We already know what Moonbase Alpha will look like:

 

[Andy_Ross]

and we know it's fate.