Happy Friday.
The current thing in tech and business is the SpaceX IPO.
Run of ShowAlamySpaceX priced at $135 per share, but opened at $150, good showing so far. We’ll be tracking it through the show and had everyone from the team seal predictions for where the stock would be at noon pacific today. Tune in to see who wins. There’s been a ton of coverage around SpaceX, pretty much every possible angle and take has been enumerated, but here are some of the best pieces we’ve read in and around the IPO:
Bloomberg has a 10-minute video breaking down all the ways the SpaceX IPO is unique.
Jimmy Soni, author of The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, went back in time to tell a story about Elon Musk on Capitol Hill in 2004.
Here’s a tour of Elon Musk’s real estate purchases through history in the WSJ Mansion Section.
Another piece of coverage in WSJ — an op-ed by Jimmy Soni, who wrote ‘The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley’ — goes through Elon’s history of fighting the government to allow more competition in space-focused procurement contracting, starting with his 2004 congressional testimony on the subject, two years after he had founded SpaceX.
WSJ also put out a fact sheet on SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who’s been a powerful operator and (mostly) behind-the-scenes force at the company for nearly two decades.
Marcus Milione analyzed what opening day IPO buyers are signing up for — “83% of the implied value sits in the terminal value... you are buying a 2036 story, not a business you can underwrite off current numbers.”
Tune into the show today — we’ll be talking a lot about SpaceX, Elon, and what this IPO means for the future of space and tech.
Clip Spotlight: Delian on the implications of SpaceX’s $2T+ IPOWhen we streamed from Hill & Valley in March, Varda’s Delian Asparouhov said the $1–2 trillion SpaceX IPO will flood the space industry with capital, attention, and talent moving into next-gen applications as people rotate out of their positions:
“I like to think of space like a highway: when you first only had a handful of cars there, everybody had to bring their own gas tank. Once you get thousands of cars up there, you can start to invest in a gas station.”
“There are layers of infrastructure, and as you build up each layer - reusable rockets, space factories, gas stations, ground stations - now you can start building application layers on top of those.”
“I think one day you’ll see Founders Fund lead a round in a lunar ice mining operation.”
“I would bet that in the next five years, we lead a ~$10M financing round into a lunar ice mining operation.”
HeadlinesFox News: Elon Musk gives speech before ringing the NASDAQ opening bell
NYT: He Spent 15 Years Amassing SpaceX Shares. Now Comes the Windfall.
FT: Elon Musk is a real-life Bond villain
WSJ: The Teachers Getting $50,000 Bonuses Thanks to a Massive Meta Data Center
WSJ: What Elon Musk Bought and Sold During His Quest to ‘Own No House’
George Hotz: AI will be massively deflationary
Mistral AI explores €3B raise at €20B valuation
Bloomberg: Kioxia Becomes Japan’s Most Valuable Firm as AI Mania Goes On
FT: The quantum computing revolution is closer than you think
WSJ: Ken Griffin Ramps Up His Miami Real-Estate Play
WSJ: AI Is Turbocharging the Spamosphere, Amping Up Prolific Text-Message Scams
WSJ: AI Needs Ajinomoto’s Film, But Its CEO Won’t Raise Prices Just Because
WSJ: What the House of the Future Will Look Like, Room by Room
Bloomberg: How a Tiny British Island Fell Into an International Gambling Scandal
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