Musk to become a Trillionaire?

Apparently he needs this trillion dollars to get himself to Mars. Which, for me, would be money well spent. I mean, he could have used it to end world hunger, to provide clean water and shelter for any who lacked it and probably halted all treatable diseases - and still had enough left over to live on very comfortably. But compared to that, removing Musk from this planet is still a better outcome.

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When you put it like that Mars sounds the best place for him.

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And just think of the multitudes that would attend his “send off” party!!

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There are currently zero individual trillionaires in the world.

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The director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) stated that 2% of Musk’s wealth ($6.6 billion) could solve world hunger. Musk replied on X (formerly Twitter) that if the WFP published a detailed, transparent plan explaining exactly how the money would be spent, he would sell Tesla stock immediately and donate the proceeds.

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Elon has done more than most countries.
$7.1 million to Baylor Scott & White Healthcare, $5.4 million to the X Prize Foundation, and $5 million each to the Windward School, Austin Habitat for Humanity, and The Seton Fund…
$50 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and $1 million to the Arbor Day Foundation

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Gosh wow, a whole $63 million. So generous.
Wait. 63 million out of 823 billion. What is that … 0.00765%.
When I was working, and got to a decent salary, I decided to donate 1% of my net earnings to charity. That is 130 times (or 13000%) more generous than Musk.
Wait, I did this every year for 20 years. So I’m officially 2600 times more generous than Musk. And Musk is officially a selfish toad.
Any other unwarranted praise you feel the need to bestow on the selfish toad Musk?

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He has donated more than you could ever dream or capable of. It’s a whole lot of little bit.

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Google, in Ai mode:

does musk donate to himself

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You really do struggle with scale, don’t you?

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63 million is 63 million people will never earn in their life time.
Or we can use that funny math that doesn’t have the same actual effect.

Unconventional philanthropy?

Musk has donated billions of dollars in shares to charities, according to US regulatory documents, and has pledged many millions to various causes. But his philanthropy has been criticised.

The New York Times, external last year called it “haphazard and largely self-serving - making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses”.

This IPO of SpaceX seems strange. They only released 4% of the shares. The initial offering share price was set some time ago - normally the appetite & valuations from commercial investors set the price just before the offering happens. This share price values SpaceX at $1.77 trillion … which is crazy considering SpaceX revenues are $17 billion and it made a loss of $4.2 billion on that revenue. So no-one has been buying shares based on calculating likely profits. SpaceX is not only a rocket maker - it also has Starlink (internet provider) and xAI (artificial intelligence developer). So what do people think they are buying and which of the three divisions is going to be the driver of future profits?
Currently Starlink drives 60% of the revenues and at decent operating profits. And it has been growing rapidly - although that growth might start flattening out. Plus, revenue per customer has dropped by a third over the last couple of years.
More concerning is that SpaceX rocket division is mainly launching Starlink satellites - more than half the 165 launches last year were to put Starlink satellites into orbit. So the loss making rocket division is effectively subsidising the internet division by putting their satellites into space at a loss each time.
At the moment, the xAI division is all about eye-watering levels of investment. $12.7 billion last year - spent on new data centres. Therefore it looks a lot like the IPO was done to pay back the massive $29 billion in debt and the mad costs of ramping up the AI capability. And a little bit to develop the new rocket which aims to reduce costs of putting satellites into space.
So, yes, this IPO has made Musk a paper trillionaire. But there must be doubts about the true viability and value of this three division company.

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That was informative … ta for posting that Lincs.
SpaceX seems somewhat overvalued.

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You really do struggle with anybody who has an opposing view to yours, don’t you? :upside_down_face:

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Strange that you should post that straight after posting the Jonathan Pie video … which pretty much reflects stuff I’ve posted in this thread. So assuming you posted the video because you liked it then it seems you and I agree on stuff. Which is nice.

For anyone who suspected SpaceX shares were overvalued I’ve just seen where this week Elon Musk has just suffered his biggest loss in personal wealth after SpaceX shares fell dramatically.

He lost £263bn … a drop down to 1.1tr rather than 1.4tr.
I’m struggling to feel sorry for the guy.

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According to the financial news last night SpaceX shares have halved from their peak and are now back down to about their original offer price so actually Musk hasn’t gained or lost anything - it was all on paper.

True, the shares have fallen back toward the IPO price. But they still can fall further.
There is a lot of commentary about the weakness of the SpaceX operating model and business plan. The prospectus talks about inter-planetary travel and Mars rockets from 2028. Neither are going to happen for decades. Even if a manned rocket gets to Mars (say in 10 years time) then there are significant obstacles to that being profitable. Astronauts can only safely absorb the radiation of one flight - that is, one way flight. Coming back as well means double the safe dose. But say they address that issue. Then what exactly is likely to get to Mars - a handful of astronauts and a few bits of equipment. People can’t stay on Mars without very significant infrastructure to protect them from radiation (no atmosphere, no magnet poles), the temperatures (down to -60 deg), the lack of anything to eat/drink. And to do what - find minerals? Maybe, but how to get any meaningful amount back to home.
The big bold space travel thing is a hoax.
So SpaceX is a not very exciting internet provider (easily copied), a satellite launch capability (already doing as much is as needed and there’s competition), and an AI business (lot of massive investment but not much clarity on earnings and profits).
So, all told, a false and baseless IPO valuation.