I agree with you--this is my whole point.

This deal can't just be financial engineering, since that wouldn't make sense. They must be getting something out of this, i.e. compute.

Google is buying compute because they need it. That explanation works a lot better to me than one where Google is doing this purely for unrealized future gains on a minority stake in SpaceX.

> Google is buying compute because they need it

The fact that Google owns a stake in SpaceX doesn't hurt. But the multiple math is specious, and profitability math plain wrong.