Latest / Best of Business / Eric Berger: author and senior space writer on the SpaceX IPO making Elon the world's first trillionaire

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Eric Berger: author and senior space writer on the SpaceX IPO making Elon the world's first trillionaire · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks be follow
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  Speaker 1: So the world has its first trillionaire after Elon Musk's
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  Speaker 1: SpaceX recorded the largest ever stock market debut. So what
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  Speaker 1: does this mean for SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the industry.
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  Speaker 1: Eric Berger is a senior space editor at Ars Technica
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  Speaker 1: and author of two books on Elon Musk and SpaceX,
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  Speaker 1: and he joins me Now, good morning, Eric, Good morning.
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  Speaker 1: What do you think drove the interest in SpaceX? Was
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  Speaker 1: it the story? Was it the dream, the Mars shot?
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  Speaker 2: I think it's just the compelling vision of taking spaceflight
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  Speaker 2: and making sort of some of these really wild dreams
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  Speaker 2: of reusable rockets and ultimately settling on other worlds that
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  Speaker 2: has really captured people's imagination.
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  Speaker 1: This now makes SpaceX one of the most valuable companies
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  Speaker 1: in the world. Should it be?
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  Speaker 2: That's a great question. If you look just at its
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  Speaker 2: financial numbers, it probably shouldn't be. It's not. You know,
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  Speaker 2: it has on the order of twenty or twenty five
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  Speaker 2: thousand employees, and the valuable companies have tend to have
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  Speaker 2: a lot more employees and have a lot more revenues.
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  Speaker 2: But you know, they have been enormously successful in space
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  Speaker 2: flight so far, and if they can carve out a
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  Speaker 2: dominant position in data centers in space, then they Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: they probably should be one of the most valuable companies,
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  Speaker 2: but they've got a lot of work to do to
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  Speaker 2: accomplish that.
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  Speaker 1: That's going to say, can it live up to the
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  Speaker 1: share price?
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  Speaker 2: Well, a lot has to go, right, And I think
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  Speaker 2: that's really you know, if you're buying space exit its
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  Speaker 2: current valuation, you're betting on Elon Musk and his sometimes
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  Speaker 2: erratic personality, and you're betting on, you know, the company
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  Speaker 2: being able to get to this, get starship the rocket
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  Speaker 2: flying rapidly and safely, and then build an enormous constellation
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  Speaker 2: of data centers in space, which is technically pretty challenging
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  Speaker 2: for number of reasons. So it's a risk for sure.
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  Speaker 1: What does this mean for NASA because they rely a
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  Speaker 1: lot on space X But am I right that the
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  Speaker 1: money for space X is an AI.
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  Speaker 2: So if you look at the their financial documents, they're
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  Speaker 2: viewing by far the most valuable market that can address
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  Speaker 2: is basically serving enterprise customers. That's businesses and governments with
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  Speaker 2: data from space and if you look at that and
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  Speaker 2: the piece of actual spaceflight, so so launches for commercial customers,
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  Speaker 2: flying NASA astnauts into the Moon and so forth, is
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  Speaker 2: a very very tiny piece of that valuation. So you know,
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  Speaker 2: ten or fifteen years ago NASA was by far the
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  Speaker 2: most important provider of funds to SpaceX, but it's not anymore.
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  Speaker 1: Right, how realistic is a data center in space the
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  Speaker 1: size of a football field?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the physics of it all work out. You
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  Speaker 2: can cool these off in space. Obviously, there's there's plenty
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  Speaker 2: of power the optical laser links to get high amounts
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  Speaker 2: of data down to the ground. That's proven technology. The
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  Speaker 2: bigger question, I think is the economics of it, because
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  Speaker 2: obviously it's a lot easier to build things on the ground,
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  Speaker 2: and you can get solar energy here as well, and
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  Speaker 2: so it's a matter of getting the economics to close
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  Speaker 2: and for it to make sense to build data centers
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  Speaker 2: in space. A you know, you have to have growing
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  Speaker 2: opposition to building them here on Earth and the cost
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  Speaker 2: of doing so it needs to go up. And then
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  Speaker 2: you need to get a rocket that can lift lots
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  Speaker 2: of mass for low cost, and that's what SpaceX is
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  Speaker 2: trying to do, but they're certainly not there yet.
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  Speaker 1: So how will allot shake the future of space X.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's been interesting having followed the company
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  Speaker 2: for a long time like I have. It has been
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  Speaker 2: a company that launches rockets and then fly spacecraft and
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  Speaker 2: more recently operates a lot of satellites. But if you
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  Speaker 2: look at where it's spending its money and where the
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  Speaker 2: valuation is projected to be, it's more of an AI
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  Speaker 2: company than it is a space company at this point.
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  Speaker 2: But I guess it still remains and it retains the
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  Speaker 2: name of SpaceX.
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  Speaker 1: We hear. You know, people do talk about the AI
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  Speaker 1: bubble boosting and things that would then obviously be a
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  Speaker 1: huge concern for SpaceX it.
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  Speaker 2: Would be you know, I'm I'm of the belief that
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  Speaker 2: artificial intelligence is going to be increasingly adopted. There will
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  Speaker 2: probably be some hiccups along the way, but you know,
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  Speaker 2: I think some of the similar questions were asked about
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  Speaker 2: the Internet back in the early days, and obviously it's
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  Speaker 2: pervasive everywhere today. I think something similar will happen with AI.
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  Speaker 2: I think really the big question for SpaceX it's investors
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  Speaker 2: is all of the data centers needed so basically, the
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  Speaker 2: large computing systems. Are those going to be built on
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  Speaker 2: the ground predominantly or will there be a need to
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  Speaker 2: build them in space? And can that be done so
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  Speaker 2: in an economically competitive manner? And I think that question
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  Speaker 2: really you know, I certainly don't have a crystal ball
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  Speaker 2: to make that prediction, but clearly SpaceX is betting. You know,
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  Speaker 2: if you talk to Elon Musk about this, he will
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  Speaker 2: tell you that, you know, there will be growing opposition
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  Speaker 2: to data centers on Earth and there will be this
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  Speaker 2: enormous demand that can only really be met by scaling
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  Speaker 2: up large constellations in space.
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  Speaker 1: Eric, do you think Mask will will be more transparent
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  Speaker 1: with how he contact conducts business?
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  Speaker 2: Now?
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  Speaker 1: This IPO has taking place well.
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  Speaker 2: Obviously, with SpaceX becoming a publicly traded company on Friday,
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  Speaker 2: they have to disclose a lot more of their financial data,
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  Speaker 2: so there will be there will essentially be forced transparency,
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  Speaker 2: so we'll know a lot more about the numbers. But
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  Speaker 2: he has been pretty open about his his intentions. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: you know, he put out a long video last week
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  Speaker 2: sort of putting providing some pretty interesting technical information about
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  Speaker 2: the data center satellites and plans to build and you know,
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  Speaker 2: he's not been reluctant in the past to really talk
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  Speaker 2: about the plans that he's pursuing with spaceflight it.
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  Speaker 1: What do you think he thinks about becoming a trillionay?
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  Speaker 1: Do you think he cares? Is it important to him?
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  Speaker 2: So? I don't think Elon is motivated by money. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: does he does he feel some does it feed does
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  Speaker 2: he go to be the richest personal world? I'm sure
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  Speaker 2: it does. But he is much more motivated by by
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  Speaker 2: sort of being seen as the master of the universe.
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  Speaker 2: I think in the sense that sort of he knows
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  Speaker 2: where the future is going and is building the kind
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  Speaker 2: of technologies that are going to lead us into this future.
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  Speaker 2: I think he's really motivated right now by playing a leading,
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  Speaker 2: if not the leading role in the development of artificial intelligence.
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  Speaker 2: He views he probably thinks that he's one of the
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  Speaker 2: few people that can do so than in a way
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  Speaker 2: that's safe for humanity. I mean, he is legitimately concerned
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  Speaker 2: about sort of a terminator type situation or an AI
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  Speaker 2: taking over, so he feels like he can develop safe AI.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know if we can all trust him with that,
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  Speaker 2: but that's that's what he certainly believes and he wants to.
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  Speaker 2: He WANs to play a dominant role in that, and
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  Speaker 2: so that's why he's merged SpaceX with his EXAI company,
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  Speaker 2: and why he's gone to the capital markets to get
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  Speaker 2: this war chest of nearly eighty billion dollars now to
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  Speaker 2: deploy and really compete in this industry.
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  Speaker 1: And when you look at that amount of money that
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  Speaker 1: has been raised, is pressure out on other similar businesses,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, the likes of our own rocket Lab.
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  Speaker 2: So there is always going to be room for competitors
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  Speaker 2: in spaceflight. Certainly, NASA, the US Space Force, other agencies
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  Speaker 2: around the world are very interested in seeing a competitive
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  Speaker 2: market for not just launches, but rocket labs also very
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  Speaker 2: active in space flight services, spacecraft, building satellites. So I
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  Speaker 2: mean SpaceX is never going to be the only game
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  Speaker 2: in town, and so for companies that can provide alternatives,
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  Speaker 2: there will definitely be a market for those services. And
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  Speaker 2: the reality is that if you look at companies purely
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  Speaker 2: private companies that have scaled up launch, it's really only
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  Speaker 2: SpaceX and then rocket Lab that has been successful in
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  Speaker 2: doing that so far.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for your time, really appreciate it.
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  Speaker 2: Eric.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for more from News Talks, ed B Listen
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