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SpaceX just pulled off the biggest IPO in history and made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. But is it all built on a fantasy?
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In this week's episode of Power User, I sit down with Ryan Mac, the main New York Times reporter covering SpaceX and co-author of Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, to unpack how SpaceX went from a startup mocked by aerospace veterans to a $2+ trillion company that governments, militaries, and your retirement fund now depend on.
We trace the full story from the early rocket explosions, the near-bankruptcy before Falcon 1 reached orbit in 2008, the NASA contract that saved the company, and how reusable rockets and Starlink turned SpaceX into an unstoppable money machine with 10,000 satellites in orbit.
We dive deep into Elon's trillion-dollar bet on "orbital data centers," his plan to move AI infrastructure into space, the acquisition of xAI, the Cursor deal, a possible Tesla–SpaceX merger, and his 82% voting control that makes him almost impossible to challenge.
Is Elon Musk now too big to fail? Has he escaped the gravity of accountability? Or will his dreams of putting data centers in space come crashing back to Earth? And if/when that happens, who's left holding the bag? Ryan and I get into all of it.
In this episode:
– How SpaceX was founded and almost died
– Why Starlink became the company's cash engine
– Reusable rockets, barge landings, and the "chopsticks" catch
– The plan to put AI data centers in space (and why experts are skeptical)
– Inside the record-breaking SpaceX IPO
– How index funds and 401ks got pulled into SpaceX
– Elon's 82% control and the road to "Elon Inc"
– Whether Musk is now the most powerful man on Earth