[mtgx]

This is why I think Apple missed its chance to buy Tesla and make Elon Musk its CEO at the same time.

I can't even imagine what Musk would do with Apple's $200 billion in cash. I think he would've been much more daring with that money than even Steve Jobs would've been.

But I think Apple missed its shot, and the merger of Tesla and Solar City probably sealed that for good. Now Musk is probably already seeing a 10-20x larger combined Tesla/Solar City company in his head, 10 years from now, and a potential merger with a bigger Space X as well.

So from his point of view, it probably won't be worth it anymore for him. He would probably have to take over a declining iPhone market and deal with that at the same time as dealing with explosive growth at Tesla and an imminent launch of SpaceX' big rocket to Mars.

On the other hand there would be hundreds of billions of dollars he could get access to, so I wouldn't say it's impossible to happen anymore either. However, at least to me, this would only be interesting from the "let's give Musk unlimited money and see what he can do wit it" point of view. Otherwise, I would rather see Tesla/SpaceX be on their own, than join an Apple/Tesla/SpaceX megacorp.

[Inconel]

I'd be curious what that level of money would do to the culture at SpaceX. I work here as a tech and I get the impression from top to bottom that a big part of the overall culture centers around doing things as inexpensively as possible, largely out of necessity. People here genuinely get excited when we find ways to shave off even small amounts of waste.

I'm not knowledgable enough about the psychological/sociological aspects of this but I wonder if it's possible to maintain that kind of culture when you have $200 billion sitting in the bank. It might lead to a kind of resource curse that some countries suffer from.

I wonder if there have been studies done on this at the corporate level.

[RivieraKid]

That's a really good point, what would Musk do with $200 billions.

It's questionable if he would be the profit-maximizing CEO choice for Apple though.

Perhaps he wouldn't even want the job (if we ignore the cash), because the smartphone and computer industry is maturing, i.e. tougher competition, decreasing rate of innovation, maintenance mode ahead.