$8.7B in losses over the last 5 quarters sounds bad, but that is also with $20.4B capital expenditure in the period and double digit percent increases per quarter in user metrics.

By traditional business metrics it looks toxic but compared to a typical tech unicorn it's not really outstanding.

Considering it's a tech unicorn with strategic and financial leverage like no other (their own global Internet infrastructure, access to arbitrary billions in capital, ability to build the biggest chip fab in the world), it's certainly fair to call it a gamble, but to call it failing is a stretch imo.

What failing companies?

Spacex has no existing customer to satisfy their future launch ambitions with Starship, hence data centers in space, just like they did with starlink to provide the necessary demand for Falcon 9. The launch business is not profitable without a regular cadence, too many fixed costs - ground infrastructure and personnel.

X can supply training data to to Xai and Grok is heavily integrated into X so there is some synergy there.

>'Gwynne Shotwell is weirdly undervalued for what she's accomplished and what she's put up with, and I think that will show up some time in the future.'

Gwynne is fiercely loyal to Elon. I don't expect to see significant strife between them.

"succeeding despite Elon musk" is, however, a skill set applicable at only a (strike)small number of companies (/strike) single company.

Have you got any evidence for these claims?

Facebook would never have become what it is today if Zuck had lost control of the voting. It would have been sold 10 times over and prob not exist today. I suspect the same could be said for Mask and his businesses.

These have become some of the most valuable companies on Earth. The idea that there are lapses in governance in these companies is insane. Any shareholder is buying in fully aware of the governance structure. Many because of it! Shareholders’ rights are clearly enumerated.

Generally the 10x shares aren't traded so it's impossible to see if they trade at a premium.

One exception is GOOG / GOOGL which both trade actively, and there's not much difference in price.

The mechanism for a price divergence could be accumulation of the 10x shares to seize control, but even if you could buy the entire float, it wouldn't be enough to take control, so that mechanism never happens.

No rights to compensation on bankruptcy. Payroll is first, then debt, taxes and stuff. Equity holders ride down to zero.

> I wonder if the shares without these special rights will be substantially discounted

it should be, but the market might be a bit irrational.

zuck for all his fault - he ain't a scammer or wannabe scammer.

he might have a large miss with the metaverse, & maybe current a.i effort. but in terms of being ruthless with competition & acquiring competition he did his job well as CEO.

musky on the other hand - overpromising and underdelivering.

Or $150 billion SpaceX? Internet constellations may be mildly profitable, but beyond that, most things are an endless money pit without clear path towards profit anytime soon. Like, no one is going to spend a trillion on a moon base (or exponentially more for mars) without plans to somehow recover all that money.

It's a valid point. But the markets are a harsh mistress. If you don't like fallacies, you don't buy. And if you think the number is not going to go up, you can always short the stock.

In defence of Mr Musk, despite his character flaws, Tesla is the only Western electric car company in the top 20, and this includes Korea and Japan. Also, SpaceX is ~90% of the world's commercial rocket launch capacity.

But this does not mean SpaceX would be correctly priced at the moment. It may be expensive, but SpaceX is going to have many years to come to reap the benefits of their hard work building the business.

Unlike Tesla, SpaceX is still a visionary and innovative company. Their current cash problems are precisely because they are so heavily invested in so many innovations that have yet to pan out

Love the typo.

I think Musk's luck is running out, he's been too political this past year and he seems to also have run out of geek "street cred". Remember youtubers visiting (whatever the Tesla trade show was called) were more perplexed than impressed with what has been shown. Similar sentiment seen across trade shows (like CES) where everything was AI and no one seemed to ask themselves "why are we putting AI in this?". The answer, of course, for startups and stock listed companies, to make themselves more valuable on paper.

Investors would probably be aware of that if they run any kind of sentiment analysis on online social media content. And at the same time there's some pull-out from tech stock. So maybe some are starting to realise that things are too shaky for their risk profile?

It's really sad to see that we just accept that Elon Musk, one of the most influential and maybe-still-the richest person in the world is constantly lying to shareholders for his own benefit. And gets zero punishment for it.