[miohtama]

This investment has never been secret.

Google (now under parent company Alphabet) invested roughly $900 million as the majority of a ~$1 billion funding round alongside Fidelity Investments. This gave Google an initial equity stake of about 7–7.5% in SpaceX at a valuation of roughly $10–12 billion.

[matwood]

Remember this was also when SpaceX was actually about space, instead of mostly AI and Twitter. Long-term shareholders that were sold on the space, have to be thinking about how to get out once their lockups expire.

[dgellow]

Not just that, but private investors were sold shares that all had the same voting rights. Since just before the IPO SpaceX now has dual class shares, Elon and a few insiders have class-B shares with 10x the voting power, while everybody else (including private investors) have class-A shares with 1x the voting power

[georgeburdell]

With the serious lapses in governance being made by founders with these special shares, such as Musk and Zuckerberg, I wonder if the shares without these special rights will be substantially discounted. What rights do these other shareholders retain that would keep them valuable? Rights to compensation in the case of bankruptcy?

[ballon_monkey]

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.

[ulfw]

Or maybe Facebook would still be a valuable destination and instagram still a great product for sharing photos instead of god knows what Zuckerberg has done to them now.

instagram being a cheap tiktok clone is frankly an insult.

[MASNeo]

Instagram is stealing my wife. Literally, the mental rot it inspires from echo chambers makes sensible human conversation sadly very hard.

[georgeburdell]

Facebook IPOd in 2012, after it was already used by hundreds of millions of people, and after it bought Instagram

[ballon_monkey]

When FB was private Zuck had 57% of class B voting right stock. He retained this on IPO. My point is, if he did not have control over voting, before/after IPO, FB/Meta would not be where it is today. He prevented Ads being on FB for many years operating at a loss to grow FB while shareholders complained wanting to shove Ads all over the place.

[te_chris]

“What it is today”.

Oh, glad we managed to not miss out on the 2-sided ai slop panopticon

[notfromhere]

You’re saying this as if that wouldn’t have been a positive outcome

[mensetmanusman]

The outcome would have been like phones were before the iPhone. NFL installed on every device.

[jdross]

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.

[janderson215]

I agree many buy because of the governance structure and founders retaining control, but there is a lot of dumb money out there.

From Claude via stockanalysis.com: META — institutions 67.51%, insiders 13.49%, float 2.19B of 2.54B shares outstanding. That leaves roughly 19% as retail/other.

SPCX — institutions 5.95%, insiders 46.47%, float only 638.65M of 13.17B shares. Residual is ~47.6%, but that is not retail.

[notfromhere]

The value of the company and lapses in governance have nothing to do with each other. One does not disprove the other

[NuclearPM]

> Any shareholder is buying in fully aware of the governance structure.

This is laughable. Many shareholders don’t even know they own stock in these companies.

[andsoitis]

That’s an indictment on them. You should know where you’re putting your money and why. If you delegate this to a professional or influencer, you do not get to blame them. After all, you could just buy something you think you understand better like real estate or keep it in cash.

[dragontamer]

The typical "investor" is an ETF these days.

Your standard SPY or VTI investor doesn't know jack diddly squat about shareholder rights, nor do they ever plan to invoke them.

[kelnos]

Willful ignorance is not an excuse. If you buy into an ETF, you are delegating responsibility to the people who run the ETF (or the people who maintain the index that the ETF tracks), and you've decided you're ok with that, and are ok with whatever companies are in the index/ETF.

You can always decide to pick an ETF that doesn't invest in the companies you don't like, or invest in individual stocks if you have the time and stomach for it.

[DaedalusII]

you should have a look at proxy firms. you would be surprised

[dgellow]

In the case of Spacex that's literally not the case, when private investors bought shares the company was already a decade old and had a single class of shares. It's only since the IPO that the company switched to a dual structure, multiple years after private investors bought in. And class-B shares have only been given to Elon and a few of his friends.

[miohtama]

The private investors were free to sue or arbitrage, as it is a private matter.

There were disputes around SpaceX secondary market/special purpose vehicle shares before the listing, but they were all settled out of court, AFAIK.

[timmmmmmay]

SpaceX has had multiple share classes the entire time, what are you talking about? pre-IPO there was a third Class C with no voting rights at all, these got converted to Class A

[panarky]

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.

[Polizeiposaune]

There are three classes of Google stock.

By voting rights, they have 10x (founder stock), 1x (trading as GOOGL), and 0x (trading as GOOG). The class with 10x voting rights does not trade publicly. The class with 1x voting rights does not have enough voting power to control the direction of the company so there is no real difference in perceived value between GOOG and GOOGL.

Employee stock awards are IIRC all in restricted shares of GOOG (0x voting rights) so they don't dilute the power of the founders.

[panarky]

You are correct.

Interestingly, the 10x shares held by Brin and Page constitute only 11% of the economic value of Alphabet, but 51% of the voting control.

And the 10x shares automatically convert to 1x shares upon transfer or inheritance, so if the founders cash out or die, the 10x supervoting power disappears.

[chii]

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

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

[edoceo]

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

[dzonga]

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.

[dd8601fn]

There sure is a lot of that with Musk, but there’s also a lot more “delivering” than most companies ever achieve.

[dgellow]

At this point it’s not over promising, he’s knowingly lying to investors

[hbarka]

Putting the principal idea of “publicly owned” in its head.

[laughing_man]

Not at all. Ownership and voting rights are two different things. Musk can't, for example, declare a dividend that pays his shares out more than the common shares.

[kasey_junk]

He absolutely can, but would expect to be sued in court. In Texas, where we don’t know what shareholder protections exist because the case law is so immature compared to Delaware.

But Texas is making a push very specifically around giving less shareholder protections.

[laughing_man]

Well, okay, he can do lots of illegal stuff that's going to get punished in the courts. There's no way something like that would survive SEC scrutiny, I don't care what state you're in.

[UltraSane]

Shares with more votes like that really need to be illegal.

[inemesitaffia]

No they don't.

[UltraSane]

One share one vote. Dual-class structures allow insiders to treat public markets like an interest-free ATM without accepting the standard rules of accountability.

[cavisne]

How do you think googles stocks are set up?

[lesuorac]

Eh meh.

If you're investing in an Elon company you better believe in the man because he's always ran them however he wants. Seems fine for the voting shares to reflect that since he's been running companies for decades; you had the opportunity to know what you're getting into.

If for some reason you're invested into some total market index or the like and you don't like the companies that it invests into then maybe you shouldn't invest according to those rules.

[inemesitaffia]

SpaceX has had dual class shares long before the IPO.

Please stop with the disinformation

[trimbo]

I don't think companies expanding their business should be the only reason to sell. Apple was a desktop and laptop computer company when they released the iPod. Nokia was a company making rubber products when they started making cellular equipment in the 1970s. Amazon was a ecomm company when they released AWS. Etc.

Sure, I'm cherrypicking the success stories but I don't think it's the only signal people should use.

[paulryanrogers]

Companies laundering their CEO's other failing companies is certainly a reason to sell.

[elif]

$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.

[cinntaile]

Did I miss something? When did Spacex get into the fab business?

[stevenjgarner]

The project was first teased by Musk in early 2026 and officially announced on March 21, 2026 during a special event at the defunct Seaholm Power Plant in Austin, Texas [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terafab

[2] https://terafab.ai/

[ballon_monkey]

What failing companies?

[matwood]

I wouldn't really say SpaceX expanded its business. It was merged with a social network and AI firm to juice its IPO valuation. The SpaceX part of the business is interesting, but the value is generously only about 20% of the value of the company. Anyone who wants to invest in AI isn't going to want a near last place model company. And who wants to put money into Twitter?

[TurdF3rguson]

I don't think what place you're in matters anymore when a small lab like Moonshot can come in and take the top spot out of nowhere.

[disgruntledphd2]

Sure, but that's more of an indictment of SpaceXAI. All those resources, and they get upstaged by a bunch of much more compute constrained Chinese startups.

[TurdF3rguson]

I disagree. They're renting out GPUs to other providers because they realize it's a long game that they're in a better position to win because they control infrastructure as well as hardware.

We'll have to wait and see I guess.

[wildzzz]

The iPod was a peripheral to use alongside your MacBook, it was meant to drive Apple computer sales initially and it's not like it was Apple's first attempt at a portable device (Newton). Nokia was building telecom equipment (stemming from their telephone cable experience, the insulation being a product of their original rubber business) and military equipment along with a bunch of other consumer electronics before they got into mobile phones. Amazon released AWS because that was their infrastructure they had built for themselves to handle their massive e-commerce business.

Companies generally don't just jump into a totally new market unless they've already got some experience.

The SpaceX acquisitions of xAI and X have absolutely nothing to do with space. While I'm sure SpaceX software engineers benefit greatly from cheap access to Grok, it and X have no relevance to the core business of SpaceX. It's the same level as "huh?" if Boeing decided to buy up an AI company and social media platform. The only reason xAI and X are even part of SpaceX is because Musk fucked himself with being forced to buy Twitter and he decided to bundle them with an actually profitable company.

[rabf]

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.

[xnickb]

I didn't expect to read "Datacenters in space" on HN.

[browningstreet]

SpaceX had adult leadership for a long time. I suspect there was a tacit agreement with Musk about a bit of separation.

He broke through that professional firewall when he merged xAI with SpaceX and then pushed it to go public as he did. I also posit that 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.

There was enough technical analysis to show that even Musk's cult feed can't overcome the significant financial hardships he laid on SpaceX. I personally think it was his jump the shark move. He can't really go up again after this. He no longer has any untainted assets for mega-exploits.

[AustinDev]

>'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.

[Mountain_Skies]

There are a small single digit number of 'new space' company president opportunities in the world and one of them requires dealing with Musk. Makes sense to be loyal when there's so few other equal opportunities. No doubt many companies would love to have her at the helm but very few offer the ability to build reusable rockets.

[laughing_man]

I wouldn't say Shotwell is "undervalued, weirdly or not. She's a household name among space enthusiasts.

Without looking, can you tell me who the COO of ULA is?

[sdenton4]

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

[ambicapter]

I'm sure her skill here translates to other difficult CEO personalities.

[sdenton4]

... But are those CEOs ready to admit that those skills are needed?

[consensus1]

Have you got any evidence for these claims?

[miohtama]

Nvidia was a company making PC gamer hardware, not high-performance computing.

[hn_throwaway_99]

It also seems to me to be a very odd conflict of interest given that they must see themselves as primary competitors in the AI space.

Seems similar to me as when Eric Schmidt resigned from the Apple board many years back because their products started to overlap, especially mobile.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

SpaceX is WAY more about space than Twitter.

Twitter by itself is lucky to be worth $15B anymore.

The space portion of SpaceX is easily worth 10x that.

xAI is theoretically the hype machine that makes up the remainder of the value.

[cowboy_henk]

Twitter is the “hype machine”. It’s basically the advertising arm disguised as a social media company.

At SpaceX’s valuation, even a 1-2% increase in share price due to some astroturfing on the platform they themselves own basically pays back the cost of acquiring twitter.

[mrits]

Where did you get $15 billion from?

[dopa42365]

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.

[jamiequint]

"Internet constellations may be mildly profitable"

It's insanely profitable they did $7.2bn in EBITDA on $11.4bn in revenue in 2025.

[elif]

The US government is the one who routinely spends trillions with no plans to recover money.

And SpaceX has become their favorite place to put money over the last 5 years.

[cineticdaffodil]

Moon is taxfree zone?

[johncearls]

Free Luna!

[bpodgursky]

Yes I'm sure they are just desperate to get out of their 100x investment.

A huge mistake, I'm sure the relevant parties have been punished appropriately.

[consensus1]

They must be seething in envy at the superior returns of the average HN naysayer who has been predicting the imminent collapse of all the "scams" Elon Musk is running for the last several years.

[nairboon]

I think those long-term holders who 10x their investment are quite happy with that investment so far.

[miohtama]

SpaceX, like Tesla, has always been about Elon Musk.

Investors are buying Musk, like they were buying Warren Buffett with Berkshire Hathaway. Long-term shareholders are not buying space; they are buying Musk. This has been clear to everyone since the beginning; it has been well communicated (look at SpaceX governance rules in Texas), and there is nothing mystical about it.

It's very likely Musk will roll everything up into a single Musk conglomerate.

[SecretDreams]

Investors are buying into the fallacy that musk can continue to work as a hype man, rather than some visionary or innovator. They like that he can make stock numbers go up, seemingly against all odds and reason.

Whether this trend continues or not indefinitely will largely determine if incestors start looking for the door.

[miohtama]

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.

[8note]

> Tesla is the only Western electric car company in the top 20, and this includes Korea and Japan

id attribute that to the US government rather than musk?

same with the resuable rockets.

american taxpayers have been screwed over by doing these things as money to musk vs just building it

[jeltz]

> Tesla is the only Western electric car company in the top 20

WV is number 6 in the top 20, and BMW is number 10. And while Tesla has good sales now their lack of innovation is a huge risk.

https://www.blackridgeresearch.com/blog/list-of-global-top-e...

[lindig]

> 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.

This conflates the quality of the product with the value of the business. There is no contradiction between Tesla cars selling well because they fit a market and Tesla the business not being a good investment.

[groby_b]

> you can always short the stock.

Which is going not too badly for the shorts, so far. There's a reason almost 50% of the float is loaned out.

We'll see once the earnings call rolls around.

[rabf]

Possible that a lot of those shorts are by early SpaceX investors who want to lock in a specific price before their share lockup period ends.

[wongarsu]

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

[dmix]

Tesla is making two big R&D plays into humanoid robotics and cyber taxi. That’s just as bold and requiring innovation as the SpaceX AI and starship stuff. That plus Tesla/SpaceX/Intel are together putting big money into Terafab to make semiconductors in Texas for those platforms.

[bdangubic]

> Tesla is making two big R&D plays…

The funniest thing you can write… Can’t believe people still write “Robotaxi” after 12+ years of failed promises… wild wild stuff

[mhitza]

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?

[mrits]

It’s so weird to see people actively try to criticize arguably the most successful person in the history of Earth.

[Applejinx]

If you framed it as 'the biggest criminal' it'd still be impressive but would read mighty different. Acquiring money and power is no way to go through life. Not at that cost.

[wasfgwp]

That’s some weirdly perverse attitude to have. Regardless if it’s Musk or anyone else, in general the actions of highly successful people have a disproportionally high impact on the society. So they need to be criticized as harshly as is reasonable for any misstep they take.

[ajmurmann]

It's because his companies have insane P/E and constantly overpromise

[mhitza]

Are you young and raised with the cult of personality, like so many gen Z and alpha?

Because I find your words surprising since critique is what I was raised with in the late 90s early 2000s. Offline and in the media.

At the same time your definition of criticizing is very lax, when I'm stating banal opinions and a broad observation.

[SecretDreams]

Some of the richest people the world has ever seen seem to tick all the same boxes as the least likeable and most devoid of love and empathy.

If only some billionaires (trillionaires?) could strike a better balance between successful and human. Especially since most wealth is actually wealth transfer from the poor and from taxpayer coffers to the rich.

[consensus1]

Envy is a hell of a drug

[zaik]

I have achieved nothing this year, and yet I have had a lot more success than Mr. Musk in the "human lives saved" category by not gutting USAID. With reasonable estimates on the weight of this category I'm quite confident to have been more successful overall as well.

[dgellow]

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.

[hnbad]

We really need to stop thinking in terms of individuals and more in terms of systems. The problem isn't just Musk. If it wasn't him, it would be someone else.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Well X is at the end of the name, so first is about Space, then about X, right?

/s

[alberth]

Original HN thread, 11-years ago (220 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8914956

[miohtama]

What a find in the archives!

"It's quite amazing how this values SpaceX at 10bn, less than 50% of WhatsApp."

Somebody was wise a decade ago.

[justinhj]

At the time Starlink was announced as was rocket reusability. Both were widely mocked and considered infeasible.

Since then Starlink has succeeded, reusable rockets are a reality, ISS crewed spaceflight restored to US.

I expect all that had an impact on the valuation. Personally I wouldn't invest in Elon because his stock is a wild ride but space x has achieved a lot.

[3form]

In fact it was often mentioned as a recommended way to try to invest in SpaceX via proxy, before IPO. I don't think that advice had much merit, but it was there nevertheless.

[mvdtnz]

No one made any claim that it was a secret. The linked article is literally about public disclosures from Google themselves.

[blitzar]

disclose /dɪˈskləʊz/ verb verb: disclose; 3rd person present: discloses; past tense: disclosed; past participle: disclosed; gerund or present participle: disclosing

make (secret or new information) known.