[Veserv]

Nah, he is shockingly good at raising money. SpaceX has been losing billions of dollars per year and making it up by raising money to cover the shortfall. In the last year or so they raised $1.7B at a $137B valuation [1]. This is a company that is only estimated to make $4.6B in revenue [2] in a industry with a total addressable market (TAM) of ~$13.5B. SpaceX is being valued at ~30x revenue and ~10x the revenue of the entire industry, not earnings, revenue.

Of course, this is all small potatoes compared to the immense amount of money Musk has raised for Tesla from consumers by falsely claiming they will have autonomous vehicles next year, every year, for 7+ years.

These raises are distinct from any government support they may have received, though his ability to structure the companys to receive government support and the cash flow generated from those activitys may have been helpful in supporting the companys and the narratives they built to achieve the valuations and funding levels they got. It really just all leads back to him being amazing at getting his hands on huge gobs of money.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/01/03/spacex-...

[2] https://payloadspace.com/predicting-spacexs-2023-revenue/

[3] https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/spac...

[RegularOpossum]

But the logical question is, could any of that been possible without the government subsidies he received? I think without that prior optimization for subsidies, he's not given the creditability or ever actual credit to do any of the other shenanigans.

[zassy]

Even if he couldn’t, so what?

EV subsidies were made as a way for the government to encourage consumers to buy electric cars and encourage car producers to make electric cars. It’s not like they were made with the purpose of making Musk rich and literally any other car manufacturer or rich person wanting to make a car manufacture could have done the same. Should the US have never subsidized electric vehicles or should have all the car manufacturers have ignored the subsidies and continued to to completely ignore the EV market?

Complaining that someone filled a market niche that the government very intentionally created just seems so weird to me.

[dotnet00]

What's the point of making up misleading arguments? Are you that blinded by your dislike of one person?

SpaceX has been spending billions on R&D, that's what the fund raising is for, that's why their spending is greater than revenue, the results of which are clearly visible in the weekly Starlink launches and rapid development of Starship and which have a strong business case.

This sort of bad faith analysis is exactly why companies in industries with significant "front heavy" investment have such a hard time.