Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Weekly Elon Musk News Updates - 1-24-2026

Transcript

Weekly Elon Musk News Updates - 1-24-2026 · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Elon Musk told the World Economic Forum that robots will
• 0:03
  eventually outnumber humans, and he plans to start selling them
• 0:06
  to the public by the end of 2027.
• 0:09
  The same billionaire who called Davos boring AF and dismissed
• 0:14
  the WEF as an unelected world government just flew into
• 0:17
  Switzerland for his first appearance at the annual
• 0:19
  gathering. What made Musk suddenly willing
• 0:22
  to address an audience he spent years mocking?
• 0:25
  Now, the answer involves Tesla's shifting identity, bold
• 0:29
  predictions about AI, and a surprising admission about
• 0:32
  America's energy infrastructure falling behind China.
• 0:35
  Today, we're going to cover the key announcements and what this
• 0:38
  appearance signals about Musk's evolving relationship with the
• 0:41
  global business establishment. We'll get right into that right
• 0:44
  after this very short break. Now, Musk showed up at Davos as
• 0:49
  a last minute addition, appearing one day after
• 0:51
  President Donald Trump addressed the forum.
• 0:53
  The world's richest man, now worth $677 billion, currently
• 0:58
  leads the Trump administration's Cut This Out.
• 1:03
  His decision to attend this time signals A calculated shift in
• 1:06
  how he wants to engage with global power brokers.
• 1:10
  Larry Fink opened the interview by telling the audience their
• 1:13
  applause was insufficient in instructing them to start again.
• 1:18
  Musk then attempted a joke about Trump's territorial ambitions,
• 1:21
  referencing a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of
• 1:24
  Venezuela, and the joke landed flat.
• 1:27
  Fink described Musk as a great friend and steered clear of any
• 1:31
  challenging questions. The Musk framed Tesla's mission
• 1:34
  as sustainable abundance rather than simply sustainable energy.
• 1:39
  He explained that Tesla and SpaceX exist to maximize the
• 1:42
  future of civilization and to expand consciousness beyond
• 1:46
  Earth. When Fink asked about the common
• 1:49
  thread connecting his ventures, Musk joked that when people ask
• 1:53
  if aliens exist, he tells them I am 1 now.
• 1:56
  Musk delivered his most concrete timeline yet for Tesla's
• 2:00
  Optimist humanoid robot. He confirmed that Optimist units
• 2:03
  are already performing simple tasks in Tesla factories.
• 2:07
  By the end of 2026. He expects them to handle more
• 2:10
  complex work. Public sales could benefit by
• 2:13
  the end of 2027, but only after Tesla achieves very high
• 2:17
  reliability, very high safety and a very high range of
• 2:21
  functionality, he said. Now, the market for humanoid
• 2:24
  robots currently sits between 2 billion and $3 billion, but
• 2:28
  could reach about 40 to 200 billion by 2035.
• 2:33
  I've been digging into these analytics of the show. 37% of
• 2:36
  you have followed the show. Thank you. 63% of you have not
• 2:40
  yet. I get it.
• 2:41
  You are waiting because you forgot how to do it right?
• 2:45
  I do it all the time. I've been doing this for about 6
• 2:48
  years, going to do it for 10 more.
• 2:50
  We keep this short and sweet. Please leave a like and
• 2:53
  subscribe and a follow on whatever platform you're on.
• 2:55
  That's it, thank you very much. Let's get back into the Musk
• 2:59
  news here. Musk said that AI will become
• 3:03
  smarter than any individual human by the end of 2026.
• 3:08
  And I'll surpass the collective intelligence of all humanity
• 3:10
  within five years. He said the AI race as
• 3:15
  fundamentally constrained by electrical power rather than
• 3:17
  chip production. the US, he warned, will soon produce more
• 3:21
  AI chips than it can actually turn on.
• 3:24
  And China emerged as a recurring theme.
• 3:26
  Musk noted that the country is deploying over a 1000 gigawatts
• 3:29
  of solar capacity per year, making solar the largest energy
• 3:32
  source in the world. He criticized American tariff
• 3:36
  barriers as solar panels, saying they make the economics of
• 3:39
  deploying solar artificially high.
• 3:41
  And SpaceX is working toward manufacturing 100 gigawatts of
• 3:44
  solar power annually in the US, the goal he expects to achieve
• 3:48
  within three years. Now on autonomous vehicles, Elon
• 3:52
  Musk declare that self driving is essentially A solved problem
• 3:55
  at this point. Tesla has rolled out robo taxi
• 3:58
  services in a few American cities and expects widespread
• 4:01
  development by year's end. He expressed hope for European
• 4:04
  approval for supervised full self driving next month, and
• 4:08
  earlier this week he warned that initial production of both the
• 4:11
  Cyber Cab and Optimus will be agonizingly slow before
• 4:15
  accelerating dramatically. And Musk used his first World
• 4:19
  Economic Forum appearance to announce that Tesla will sell
• 4:22
  humanoid robots by the end of 2027.
• 4:25
  Predicted AI will exceed human intelligence by the end of this
• 4:29
  year. Keep that as a bookmark.
• 4:32
  He claimed that self driving technology is solved 100%.
• 4:36
  And he warned that American energy infrastructure cannot
• 4:38
  keep pace with EI chip production in that China is way
• 4:42
  ahead of the US in energy now. He used to be a critic, but now
• 4:47
  he appears willing to court the global elite as Tesla expanded
• 4:51
  some robotics, AI, and energy. Thank you so much for listening
• 4:56
  today. I appreciate you.
• 4:58
  Like I said before, if you subscribe to the show, thank
• 5:00
  you, thank you, thank you. If you haven't yet, please hit
• 5:03
  the follow or subscribe button. It really helps us out.
• 5:06
  Also, if you want to help us out, we're in dire need of
• 5:09
  funding. If you could help us out and go
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  to ourpatreonthatspatreon.com/stage
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  zerothatspatreon.com/stage 0patreon.com/stage Zero and you
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  can help us out and get us moving on the right track.
• 5:30
  We need your help so bad right now to push us to the next
• 5:35
  level. Thank you so much for all of
• 5:37
  your continued support. The Trump administration
• 5:41
  admitted in a court filing that two DOGE employees communicated
• 5:45
  with a political advocacy group seeking to overturn election
• 5:48
  results using Social Security data.
• 5:52
  The Justice Department revealed that one employee signed a voter
• 5:55
  data agreement with the unnamed group four days after a federal
• 5:59
  judge blocked DOGE for accessing sensitive records.
• 6:04
  Now the information set undiscovered for eight months
• 6:06
  until an unrelated SSA review in November surfaced those
• 6:11
  communications. Now, Did Elon Musk's efficiency
• 6:14
  operation quietly convert America's most sensitive
• 6:18
  database into a political weapon?
• 6:21
  Now, the signed agreement may have involved matching Social
• 6:24
  Security data to state voter rolls.
• 6:27
  The unnamed advocacy group never received approval through S S as
• 6:31
  official data exchange procedures.
• 6:33
  We're going to cover how this happened under an active court
• 6:36
  order. The whistleblower who warned
• 6:38
  about data invulnerabilities months earlier, the Cloudflare
• 6:42
  server problem that left SSA unable to track what was shared
• 6:46
  and what the Hatch Act referrals actually mean for the two
• 6:50
  unnamed employees. Now the Justice Department
• 6:54
  disclose these facts in a Friday court filing making a formal
• 6:58
  correction to previously testimony by top SSA officials.
• 7:03
  Senior DOJ official Elizabeth Shapiro wrote that in March
• 7:06
  2025, a political advocacy group contacted 2 members of s s as
• 7:12
  Doge Team with a request to analyze state voter rolls the
• 7:16
  group had acquired. The group's stated aim was to
• 7:19
  find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in
• 7:23
  certain states. Shapiro said that the filing was
• 7:27
  meant to ensure full candor to the court, though the disclosure
• 7:30
  comes nearly a year after the alleged conduct occurred.
• 7:33
  Now the sequence of events reveals A troubling timeline.
• 7:37
  US District Court Ellen Hollander said a temporary
• 7:40
  restraining order on March 20th, 2025, blocking DOGE from
• 7:44
  accessing sensitive, confidential and personally
• 7:47
  identifiable information at SSA. Four days later, on March 24th,
• 7:53
  one of the DOGE employees signed and sent a voter data agreement
• 7:56
  to the political advocacy group. That agreement was never
• 8:00
  reviewed or approved through s s as data exchange procedures.
• 8:04
  The agency claims no employees outside the DOGE team knew about
• 8:07
  the communications or the agreement until November of
• 8:11
  2025, when an unrelated internal review uncovered them.
• 8:16
  Now, Judge Hollander had been clear about her concerns when
• 8:19
  she issued the restraining order.
• 8:20
  She wrote that the DOGE team was essentially engaged in fishing
• 8:23
  expedition at SSA, searching for a fraud epidemic based on little
• 8:28
  more than suspicion. She noted that DOGE had launched
• 8:31
  a search for the proverbial needle in a haystack without any
• 8:35
  concrete knowledge that the needle was actually in that
• 8:39
  haystack. The order came after a
• 8:41
  government employee, a union, filed suit in February 2025
• 8:45
  arguing that Doge's access violated federal privacy laws
• 8:50
  and put millions of America's personal information at risk.
• 8:53
  The Supreme Court reversed the restraining order in June 2025
• 8:56
  and allowed DOGE members to continue accessing Social
• 9:00
  Security data. Now, the legal battle over
• 9:02
  Doge's access to SSA systems began.
• 9:04
  Within weeks of Trump's second inauguration, DOGE team members
• 9:09
  showed up at the Social Security Administration and started
• 9:11
  demanding access to files. Acting Commissioner Michelle
• 9:14
  King resigned after refusing A DOGE request to access the
• 9:18
  agency's sensitive government records, and the DOGE team
• 9:22
  argued they needed access to modernized technology, maximize
• 9:25
  efficiency, and read out waste, fraud, and abuse.
• 9:28
  Those stated purposes now appear incomplete given the DOJ's
• 9:32
  disclosure about communications with political groups focused on
• 9:36
  election fraud. Now.
• 9:39
  The DOJ filing also revealed a separate data handling problem
• 9:42
  involving Cloudflare. Social Security Administration
• 9:45
  learned that between March 7th and March 17th, 2025, DOGE team
• 9:50
  members used links to share data through Cloudflare servers.
• 9:55
  Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and operates
• 9:59
  outside the agency's security protocols.
• 10:02
  SSA did not know DOGE members were using Cloudflare during
• 10:05
  this period. Because Cloudflare is a third
• 10:08
  party entity, Social Security Administration has not been able
• 10:12
  to determine exactly what data was shared or whether the data
• 10:15
  still exists on those servers. The 10 day window of Cloudflare
• 10:19
  usage ended just three days before Judge Hollander issued
• 10:22
  her restraining order. Now I've been digging through
• 10:26
  the analytics of the show and notice that 37% of you are
• 10:29
  following with the show and I appreciate you and it's going up
• 10:32
  and for you I'm forever grateful.
• 10:35
  Now there's 63% of you that listen to the show and just
• 10:39
  forgot to hit the subscribe or follow button.
• 10:41
  That's totally fine. I do it all the time.
• 10:43
  I watch shows on YouTube. I listen to podcasts, this is a
• 10:46
  5 or 6 episodes sometimes and I finally I'll hit the subscribe
• 10:49
  button. I'm like, you know what, it's
• 10:51
  worth it. But I've been an independent
• 10:53
  journalist covering Elon Musk, SpaceX, XAIX, Tesla, Space
• 10:58
  Flight and tech for the last six or seven years.
• 11:01
  And I'm going to continue for the next 10 years.
• 11:03
  And all I ask from you is one second of your time to hit the
• 11:06
  follower subscribe button on the platform that you're listening
• 11:09
  or watching on right now. Thank you so much.
• 11:11
  I appreciate you and I'm happy to have you in this community
• 11:16
  now. The SSA referred both DOGE
• 11:18
  employees to the Office of Special Counsel in late December
• 11:21
  2025 for potential Hatch Act violations. the Hatch Act bars
• 11:26
  federal employment government employees from using their
• 11:29
  official positions for political purposes.
• 11:32
  The DOJ said that it remains unclear whether the two DOGE
• 11:36
  team members actually share data with the political advocacy
• 11:39
  group. However, Shapiro noted that
• 11:41
  e-mail suggests DOGE team members could have been asked to
• 11:44
  assist the group by accessing SSA data to match the voter
• 11:48
  rolls. Now, the referral does not mean
• 11:51
  the employees were guilty of wrongdoing, only that the
• 11:54
  allegations require investigation by the Office of
• 11:57
  Special Counsel. Now this disclosure arrives 5
• 12:01
  months after whistleblower Charles Borges sounded the alarm
• 12:05
  about DOGE handling data. They served as s s as Chief Data
• 12:10
  Officer and filed a complaint in August 2025 alleging that DOGE
• 12:14
  officials copied the entire Nibbett database to a vulnerable
• 12:18
  cloud servo. Now this database is the master
• 12:21
  fire for all Social Security card applications containing
• 12:25
  names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers,
• 12:29
  citizenship status, race and ethnicity, and parents names for
• 12:34
  over 300 million Americans. His complaint also revealed that
• 12:39
  within 24 hours of Judge Hollander issuing the temporary
• 12:42
  restraining order, senior career officials at SSA received
• 12:46
  instructions to undo the court ordered access restrictions for
• 12:50
  two DOGE employees and grant them new expanded privileges.
• 12:55
  SSA Chief Information Officer Aram Maghadasi, who was
• 13:00
  previously associated with DOGE, authorized the arrangement
• 13:03
  despite career officials flagging it as high risk now.
• 13:08
  Borges submitted his involuntary resignation days after his
• 13:12
  whistleblower complaint became public.
• 13:14
  He wrote in his resignation letter that SSA's actions
• 13:17
  against him made his duties impossible to perform legally
• 13:21
  and ethically. He described experiencing
• 13:23
  exclusion, isolation and a hostile work environment.
• 13:26
  After raising concerns, his resignation later reportedly
• 13:29
  vanished from recipients in boxes within 30 minutes of being
• 13:32
  sent, raising questions about censorship against him.
• 13:36
  The Government Accountability Project, which filed this
• 13:39
  complaint, said Borges no longer felt the he could continue
• 13:43
  working at SSA in good conscience given what he had
• 13:48
  witnessed. Andrea Mesa, the organization's
• 13:50
  director of campaigns and Borges attorney, stated that his
• 13:53
  bravery is coming forward was an important step toward mitigating
• 13:58
  the risks before it was too late.
• 14:02
  Now the Hatch Act referrals face a practical enforcement problem.
• 14:06
  The Trump White House has repeatedly indicated that it
• 14:08
  does not prioritize Hatch Act enforcement, treating the
• 14:11
  federal ethics law as largely irrelevant.
• 14:14
  Not a law that they say no. Even if the official or the
• 14:18
  Office of Special Counsel finds violations, punishment would
• 14:21
  ultimately come from the Trump administration itself.
• 14:24
  And Elon Musk stepped down from Doge in spring of 2025, but the
• 14:29
  employees he brought into SSA remained embedded in the agency.
• 14:33
  Doji's original justification for accessing SSA records was to
• 14:37
  modernize technology and root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
• 14:41
  But the revelation that employees may have used this
• 14:43
  access to coordinate with political groups on election
• 14:46
  challenges cuts directly against their stated purpose.
• 14:52
  ServiceNow just signed a three-year deal with Open AI to
• 14:55
  embed GPT 5.2 directly into its enterprise workflow platform.
• 15:00
  This agreement brings Open AI technical advisors and
• 15:03
  ServiceNow engineers together to build custom AI solutions that
• 15:06
  enterprises can deploy without bespoke development.
• 15:10
  ServiceNow powers more than 80 billion workflows every year
• 15:15
  across different platforms, IT, customer service, and
• 15:18
  operations. And this new partnership between
• 15:21
  these two gives those workflows direct access to Frontier AI
• 15:25
  capabilities from ChatGPT and Open AI, including real time
• 15:30
  speech to speech voice agents. So when you're on the phone and
• 15:34
  you're talking to an agent from a ServiceNow company, you're
• 15:38
  probably talking to a person. Nope, that's not right.
• 15:41
  You're actually talking to an AI.
• 15:43
  Now. That's what's going to be
• 15:44
  happening for service Now. The company that controls the
• 15:47
  enterprise workflow layer now has the keys to one of the most
• 15:51
  advanced AI systems on this planet.
• 15:54
  And what does that mean for every other software company
• 15:56
  fighting for the same customers? Open a eyes.
• 15:59
  Computer use model will also become part of the ServiceNow
• 16:03
  platform, allowing AI agents to perform IT tasks like restarting
• 16:08
  devices or accessing data locked in legacy mainframe systems.
• 16:13
  Today, we're going to cover the competitive dynamics driving
• 16:17
  this whole deal. It's $12 billion of acquisitions
• 16:22
  that ServiceNow did this year. And why this race to become the
• 16:25
  AI control tower for business just got a little bit spicy.
• 16:28
  And we're going to do that right off this very short break.
• 16:34
  ServiceNow is betting big on becoming the central hub where
• 16:37
  EI meets enterprise. The company has spent more than
• 16:40
  $12 billion on acquisitions in 2025, including Moveworks for
• 16:45
  2.85 billion, cybersecurity startup Vasa for roughly a
• 16:50
  billion, and Armas for 7.75 billion in its largest purchase
• 16:55
  ever, 7 acquisitions in a year makes a sharp departure from a
• 16:59
  company that built its reputation on organic growth and
• 17:02
  the mantra of one platform, 1 architecture, one data model.
• 17:07
  Now this Open AI partnership accelerates that strategy by
• 17:10
  adding frontier AI capabilities the company could not build
• 17:13
  internally. On the same timeline, ServiceNow
• 17:16
  now processes more than 80 billion workflows annually
• 17:20
  across the Fortune 500, and the company wants every one of those
• 17:23
  workflows running on its EI infrastructure.
• 17:27
  Brad Lightcap, who's Open AI chief operating officer, told
• 17:31
  The Wall Street Journal that enterprises want open AI
• 17:33
  intelligence applied directly into service network flows.
• 17:36
  Customers increasingly seek what Lightcap calls agentic and
• 17:41
  multimodal experiences that behave like AI teammates rather
• 17:45
  than just chat bots answering questions for you.
• 17:48
  And the deal includes a revenue commitment from Service Now to
• 17:50
  Open AI, though neither company disclosed the actual financial
• 17:54
  terms. Open AI has been pursuing
• 17:56
  similar enterprise software partnerships, including deals
• 18:00
  with Intuit and $100 million commitment from Databricks last
• 18:04
  September. This is Open AI strategy for
• 18:06
  turning research breakthroughs into recurring enterprise
• 18:09
  revenue. Find the platforms where
• 18:11
  businesses already run their operations and then embed
• 18:15
  Frontier models directly into those systems.
• 18:18
  ServiceNow gives Open AI access to 85% of the Fortune 500
• 18:23
  through this single integration. Now, the technical integration
• 18:27
  goes beyond just API access. That's pretty simple.
• 18:31
  ServiceNow plans to build speech to speech AI agents for customer
• 18:35
  service using Open A is Voice Focus models.
• 18:39
  These agents will listen, reason, and respond in natural
• 18:42
  language without converting speech to text first.
• 18:46
  A user could speak in their preferred language and receive
• 18:48
  an instant response from an AI agent that opens a case,
• 18:51
  triggers an approval, and orchestrates next steps without
• 18:55
  translation delays. That capability eliminates the
• 18:58
  latency and context loss that plague current automated
• 19:01
  customer service systems. Current voice automation
• 19:04
  typically converts speech to text, process that text through
• 19:07
  an AI model, generates a text response, and then it converts
• 19:11
  it back to speech. Each conversation step
• 19:15
  introduces delays and loses nuances, and speech to speech
• 19:19
  processing cuts out the middle steps entirely and preserves the
• 19:22
  natural flow of the conversation.
• 19:25
  And ServiceNow. This is huge.
• 19:27
  They'll also integrate Open a is Computer Use model to unlock
• 19:30
  what the company calls a new class of IT automation.
• 19:35
  IT professionals, watch out, AI is actually coming for you.
• 19:39
  These agents can interact with systems by navigating interfaces
• 19:42
  the way a human would, turning unstructured documents into
• 19:46
  actionable data, and automating interactions with legacy
• 19:49
  systems, including mainframes. The practical application here
• 19:54
  is quite significant. Many large enterprises still run
• 19:58
  critical operations on 30 year old hardware, and that modern
• 20:03
  automation tools can't touch them.
• 20:06
  Right now they're they can't even do it.
• 20:09
  Banks, insurance companies, they all run on IT.
• 20:10
  And governments too. They depend on COBOL systems.
• 20:13
  The process? Trillions of dollars in
• 20:16
  transactions annually. An AI agent that can navigate
• 20:19
  those interfaces opens a massive surface area for automation that
• 20:24
  was previously locked away behind obsolete technology
• 20:28
  stack. Now, Servicenow's president
• 20:31
  Ahmed Zavery and chief operating officer framed this partnership
• 20:35
  around speed and scale. Companies shifting from AI
• 20:39
  experimentation to full development need multiple AI
• 20:41
  capabilities working together to deliver faster outcomes.
• 20:45
  ServiceNow already offers customers access to various AI
• 20:48
  models, but the open AI integration makes GPT 5.2 a
• 20:52
  preferred intelligence capability embedded natively in
• 20:55
  the platform. That preferential treatment
• 20:58
  Signal Service now is picking sides in the AI model wars
• 21:01
  rather than remaining model agnostic.
• 21:05
  I've been digging through all of the analytics of this show and
• 21:09
  noticed that around 37 of you, that's 37% sorry, are following
• 21:15
  the channel. And for you, I'm forever
• 21:18
  grateful. I thank you so much for being
• 21:20
  part of this community. The other 63% of you haven't hit
• 21:23
  the follower subscribe button. I've been an independent
• 21:26
  journalist covering Elon Musk, SpaceX tech, AI for the last six
• 21:31
  years and I'm going to continue for the next 10 years.
• 21:35
  And all I'm going to ask you for is one second of your time for
• 21:38
  10 whole years of mine, just hit the follow or subscribe button
• 21:41
  on whatever platform you're listening, you're watching on
• 21:43
  right now. I'm extremely grateful for that.
• 21:46
  You don't know how much it helps.
• 21:48
  It's can propel us up the charts.
• 21:51
  And if that happens, we can make the show way better than it
• 21:54
  already is. We're working on it.
• 21:55
  As you can tell, I had some audio upgrades at the beginning
• 21:58
  of the year and we're not going back because of your support.
• 22:02
  So thank you so much for all that you do.
• 22:06
  Now let's get back into some of this.
• 22:08
  Salesforce agents. Open AI, it's all wild right
• 22:13
  now. It's the Wild West of AI now.
• 22:17
  There's competitive pressure right now, and it runs real
• 22:20
  deep. Salesforce launched Agentforce 2
• 22:22
  point O in December, with CEO Marc Benioff declaring that the
• 22:26
  AI revolution is already here. And Salesforce reported 119
• 22:30
  percent agent growth in the first half of 2025 and expanded
• 22:34
  partnerships with Open AI, Anthropic, Google, and AWS to
• 22:38
  solidify its ecosystem approach. Work Day announced its
• 22:42
  Illuminate AI agents for HR, case management, performance
• 22:46
  reviews, and financial close processes.
• 22:49
  SAP has rolled out more than 40 Jewel agents embedded across its
• 22:53
  enterprise software suite and plans to have over 400 AI
• 22:57
  scenarios by the end of 2025. And Oracle claims it's Fusion
• 23:02
  Applications suite delivers end to end AI within existing
• 23:06
  workflows at no additional cost to customers.
• 23:09
  Every major enterprise software company is racing to prove it
• 23:12
  can orchestrate AI across business workflows in the vendor
• 23:16
  that wins controls the massive revenue stream for all of the
• 23:20
  enterprise. And according to Gartner,
• 23:22
  worldwide spending on information security alone or
• 23:25
  reach $240 billion in 2026, with AI adoption driving much of that
• 23:30
  growth. ServiceNow is acquisition
• 23:33
  strategy over the past year, reveals its thinking Moveworks
• 23:36
  deal for 2.85 billion brought AI powered enterprise search and
• 23:40
  roughly 500 AI specialist out of the team.
• 23:43
  Moveworks provides the engagement layer where employees
• 23:46
  interact with AI through natural conversations rather than just
• 23:50
  old school fly out menus and drop down menus.
• 23:53
  Vasa added identity security and access governance, which becomes
• 23:58
  critical when you deploy autonomous AI agents.
• 24:01
  They can take actions across enterprise systems.
• 24:03
  An AI agent that can restart servers, access financial data,
• 24:07
  or modify customer records needs strict identity controls to
• 24:10
  prevent unauthorized actions. And Armis provides security for
• 24:15
  cyber exposure management across IT operational technology, IoT
• 24:20
  devices, and medical equipment. Armis recently topped 340
• 24:25
  million in annual recurring revenue with 50% year over year
• 24:28
  growth and serves over 35% of the Fortune 100.
• 24:32
  Each acquisition fills a gap that might otherwise give
• 24:35
  enterprise buyers a reason to look elsewhere, and ServiceNow
• 24:38
  wants to be the single answer to every question about enterprise
• 24:43
  AI management. ServiceNow stock rose 2% in pre
• 24:48
  market trading when news of the Open AI deal broke.
• 24:50
  Investors has previously punished the stock over concerns
• 24:54
  about the company's aggressive acquisition pace, with shares
• 24:57
  falling to the lowest level since April 2025.
• 24:59
  After the Armis announcement, Chief Financial Officer Gina
• 25:03
  Mastantuno sought to reassure investors that the spending was
• 25:07
  slow after the Armis deal closes.
• 25:10
  And the Open AI partnership offers a different idea
• 25:13
  altogether. Strategic AI integration.
• 25:16
  Rather than just swooping in and buying all those companies.
• 25:20
  Whether ServiceNow can integrate 7 major acquisitions in a year
• 25:24
  while maintaining platform coherence remains an open
• 25:27
  question. Usually doesn't happen that way,
• 25:29
  usually takes a little bit of time, and we're going to see how
• 25:33
  they do integrating this all with their own complex
• 25:37
  architecture. Elon Musk confirmed SpaceX will
• 25:40
  go public in 2026, reversing a position he held for more than a
• 25:44
  decade. The IPO could raise $30 billion
• 25:47
  in value of the company in 1.5 trillion, making it the largest
• 25:52
  public offering in history, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29
• 25:57
  billion listing in 2019. Musk had long insisted SpaceX
• 26:01
  would remain private until rockets were flying regularly to
• 26:04
  Mars, arguing that public shareholders would prioritize
• 26:08
  profits over his colonization dreams.
• 26:10
  So why did he change his mind? The answer involves data centers
• 26:14
  in space. Musk plans to retrofit new
• 26:17
  generation Sterling satellites into orbital computing platforms
• 26:21
  that could power the AI revolution, and he needs massive
• 26:25
  capital to make it happen. Today, we're going to cover the
• 26:27
  technical specs of these space data centers, the competitive
• 26:30
  race with Jeff Bezos and Google, and what this means for Musk's
• 26:34
  Mars timeline. Now, SpaceX confirmed the 2026
• 26:38
  IPO after ours Technica reporter Eric Berger published an
• 26:42
  analysis of why the company would finally go public.
• 26:45
  Musk responded on X with four words.
• 26:47
  As usual, Eric is accurate. The company is currently
• 26:50
  conducting an insider share sale at an $800 billion valuation,
• 26:56
  exactly double what SpaceX commanded at its last capital
• 26:59
  raise in 2025. And the core driver behind this
• 27:03
  reversal is a new business line that would not exist when Musk
• 27:06
  first swore off public markets. SpaceX wants to build orbital
• 27:10
  data centers using its Starlink V3 satellites, which feature
• 27:15
  high speed laser links capable of 1 terabit per second
• 27:19
  throughput. Now, that number is 10 times the
• 27:23
  capacity of current Starlink V2 satellites.
• 27:25
  The V3 satellites require Starship to launch because they
• 27:28
  are significantly larger, and SpaceX plans to deploy 60 of
• 27:33
  them per flight starting in 2026.
• 27:36
  Unlike previous Starlink generations optimized purely for
• 27:39
  communications, the V3 units are being engineered as compute
• 27:43
  capable infrastructure with larger solar arrays, machine
• 27:46
  learning accelerators and radiation shielding designed to
• 27:50
  extend operational life in the harsh space environment.
• 27:53
  Each satellite will process data before transmitting it to Earth,
• 27:57
  reducing bandwidth requirements and enabling real time AI
• 28:01
  inference at latencies below 10 milliseconds.
• 28:05
  Now space offers several advantages over terrestrial data
• 28:08
  centers that make this bet rational.
• 28:10
  Solar panels in orbit capture roughly 8 times more energy than
• 28:14
  ground installations because there is no atmosphere, no
• 28:18
  weather, and no night time and the sun facing side.
• 28:21
  Cooling comes naturally through radiative heat dissipation into
• 28:25
  the vacuum of space, eliminating the massive water and
• 28:28
  electricity requirements that plague Earth based facilities.
• 28:31
  And the International Energy Agency reports that data centers
• 28:34
  consumed about 415 terawatt hours of electricity globally in
• 28:39
  2024, roughly 1.5% of total power consumption.
• 28:44
  That figure is climbing rapidly as AI training runs demand more
• 28:49
  computational resources Now. Goldman Sachs forecasts that
• 28:53
  global power demand from data centers will increase 50% by
• 28:56
  2027, as much as 165% by the end of the decade.
• 29:02
  Orbital facilities avoid the land use conflicts and NIMBY
• 29:06
  opposition that have stalled terrestrial data center
• 29:09
  construction across the United States and Europe.
• 29:11
  Musk has described an even more aggressive long term vision.
• 29:15
  He wants to build satellite factories on the moon and use an
• 29:18
  electromagnetic railgun to launch AI satellites at lunar
• 29:22
  escape velocity without rockets. In his estimation, his approach
• 29:27
  could eventually deliver 100 terawatts of AI computing
• 29:31
  capacity per year into orbit. Figure sounds absurd until you
• 29:35
  remember that Musk has a track record of building things other
• 29:38
  people called impossible. Now SpaceX is not pursuing this
• 29:43
  opportunity in isolation. Jeff Bezos announced in October
• 29:46
  that Blue Origin has been developing orbital data center
• 29:49
  technology for more than a year. He predicted GW scale space data
• 29:54
  centers without 10 to 20 years and claimed they would
• 29:57
  eventually beat the cost of terrestrial facilities.
• 30:01
  Google launched Project Suncatcher in November of 2025,
• 30:05
  partnering with Planet Labs to put TPU chips on satellites
• 30:08
  launching in early 2027, and Google's research paper
• 30:12
  envisions 81 satellite clusters arranged in a 1 kilometer radius
• 30:16
  formation communicating through free space optical links to
• 30:20
  distribute AI workloads across the constellation.
• 30:23
  The NVIDIA backs startup Star Cloud already has a satellite in
• 30:27
  orbit running an H-100 GPU, successfully training Google's
• 30:31
  Jemma A1 model in space. Now, Star Cloud CEO told CNBC
• 30:37
  the orbital data centers would have 10 times lower energy costs
• 30:41
  than terrestrial facilities. Company plans to build a 5 GW
• 30:45
  orbital data center with solar and cooling panels measuring
• 30:48
  roughly 4 kilometers in both width and height.
• 30:52
  Now China has entered the race with its three body computing
• 30:55
  constellation, which launched 12 satellites in May 2025 through a
• 30:59
  partnership between Zhengjiang Lab and Alibaba Group.
• 31:04
  The financial picture for SpaceX makes the IPO timing very
• 31:08
  logical right now. Company generated roughly $15
• 31:11
  billion in revenue in 2025, is projected to hit about 24
• 31:15
  billion in 2026, putting it roughly on par with NASA's
• 31:19
  annual budget. And Starlink alone has grown to
• 31:22
  over 9 million subscribers from 4 million just 15 months
• 31:26
  earlier. Musk stated publicly the less
• 31:29
  than 5% of SpaceX revenue now comes from NASA, meaning the
• 31:33
  future of the company depends almost entirely on Starlink.
• 31:36
  SpaceX launched more than 160 Falcon 9 rockets in 2025, which
• 31:40
  is more than the rest of the world combined, and put over
• 31:43
  3200 Star Lake satellites into orbit during the calendar year.
• 31:47
  A single Falcon booster, designated B1O67, has now
• 31:51
  launched and landed 32 times, with turn around windows as
• 31:55
  short as three weeks. The company hit successful 500
• 31:59
  landings in October 2025, more than every other company in
• 32:02
  nation state combined. Blue Origin in second place, has
• 32:06
  landed exactly 1. Now Mars, it remains on the
• 32:12
  forefront. It's the elephant in the room
• 32:15
  for long time SpaceX fans. Musk founded the company
• 32:18
  specifically to make humanity multiplanetary, and he spent
• 32:21
  years arguing the public shareholders would never
• 32:24
  tolerate that expense. Now he said it would be
• 32:27
  unprofitable work of colonizing another planet.
• 32:30
  In 2023, he told Twitter followers that SpaceX would only
• 32:33
  go public when Mars colonial transport.
• 32:37
  Now SpaceX President Gwen Shotwell reinforced this
• 32:40
  position in 2018, saying the company would remain private
• 32:43
  until rockets were flying regularly to the Red Planet.
• 32:47
  That's not happened yet. They haven't even gotten a
• 32:49
  Starship to orbit yet. There's no in orbit refueling,
• 32:53
  and they haven't landed on another celestial body, let
• 32:56
  alone on Mars. Starship has not completed a
• 33:00
  successful orbital mission after several explosive tests.
• 33:03
  Non accrued flights to Mars remain at least a year away by
• 33:07
  the most optimistic projections. But that's probably not going to
• 33:10
  happen as well. Elana stated on the record that
• 33:13
  Mars is the distraction now. Justice Palmer, CEO of Fortuna
• 33:18
  Investments and venture capital firm invested in SpaceX, said he
• 33:22
  expected an IPO to happen after Starship reaches Mars because it
• 33:26
  would remove a massive risk factor.
• 33:30
  A failed Mars attempt as a private company causes no risk,
• 33:33
  no stock fluctuation, but the same failure as a public company
• 33:37
  could hammer the share price. Now the technical challenges are
• 33:42
  substantial, but not insurmountable.
• 33:45
  Radiation in space can damage computer chips, causing bit
• 33:48
  flips and burnout that corrupt AI calculations.
• 33:52
  Space rated processors currently lag three to four orders of
• 33:56
  magnitude behind commercial hardware and raw performance,
• 33:59
  but Google estimates that space based AI computing will only
• 34:02
  become economically viable by 2035 if launch cost dropped to
• 34:07
  $200 per kilogram from the current 1400 to $2900 range.
• 34:14
  Starship is the key to hitting that target, which puts SpaceX
• 34:18
  in a stronger position than any other competitor.
• 34:21
  Elon Musk confirms SpaceX will go public in 2026, reversing a
• 34:25
  position he held for more than a decade.
• 34:27
  The IPO could raise $30 billion in value of the company in 1.5
• 34:32
  trillion, making it the largest public offering in history,
• 34:36
  surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29 billion listing in 2019.
• 34:42
  Musk had long insisted SpaceX would remain private until
• 34:45
  rockets were flying regularly to Mars, arguing that public
• 34:48
  shareholders would prioritize profits over his colonization
• 34:52
  dreams. So why did he change his mind?
• 34:55
  The answer involves data centers in space.
• 34:58
  Musk plans to retrofit new generation Starling satellites
• 35:01
  into orbital computing platforms that could power the AI
• 35:05
  revolution, and he needs massive capital to make it happen.
• 35:09
  Today, we're going to cover the technical specs of these space
• 35:11
  data centers, the competitive race with Jeff Bezos and Google,
• 35:14
  and what this means for Musk's Mars timeline.
• 35:18
  Now, SpaceX confirmed the 2026 IPO after ours Technica reporter
• 35:23
  Eric Berger published an analysis of why the company
• 35:26
  would finally go public. Musk responded on X with four
• 35:29
  words. As usual, Eric is accurate.
• 35:32
  The company is currently conducting an insider share sale
• 35:35
  at an $800 billion valuation, exactly double what SpaceX
• 35:39
  commanded and its last capital raised in 2025.
• 35:43
  And the court driver behind this reversal is a new business line
• 35:47
  that would not exist when Musk first swore off public markets.
• 35:51
  SpaceX wants to build orbital data centers using its Starlink
• 35:55
  V3 satellites, which feature high speed laser links capable
• 35:59
  of 1 terabit per second throughput.
• 36:03
  You know, that number is 10 times the capacity of current
• 36:06
  Starlink V2 satellites. The V3 satellites require
• 36:09
  Starship to launch because they are significantly larger, and
• 36:12
  SpaceX plans to deploy 60 of them per flight starting in
• 36:17
  2026. Unlike previous Starling
• 36:20
  generations optimized purely for communications, the V3 units are
• 36:24
  being engineered as compute capable infrastructure with
• 36:27
  larger solar arrays, machine learning accelerators, and
• 36:30
  radiation shielding designed to extend operational life in the
• 36:34
  harsh space environment. Each satellite will process data
• 36:37
  before transmitting it to Earth, reducing bandwidth requirements
• 36:41
  and enabling real time AI inference at latencies below 10
• 36:45
  milliseconds. Now space offers several
• 36:48
  advantages over terrestrial data centers that make this bet
• 36:51
  rational. Solar panels in orbit capture
• 36:55
  roughly 8 times more energy than ground installations because
• 36:58
  there is no atmosphere, no weather, and no night time and
• 37:02
  the sun facing side. Cooling comes naturally through
• 37:05
  radiative heat dissipation into the vacuum of space, eliminating
• 37:09
  the massive water and electricity requirements that
• 37:11
  plague Earth based facilities. And the International Energy
• 37:15
  Agency reports that data centers consumed about 415 terawatt
• 37:19
  hours of electricity globally in 2024, roughly 1.5% of total
• 37:25
  power consumption. And that figure is climbing
• 37:28
  rapidly as AI training runs demand more computational
• 37:32
  resources now. Goldman Sachs forecasts that
• 37:35
  global power demand from data centers will increase 50% by
• 37:39
  2027, as much as 165% by the end of the decade.
• 37:44
  Urbital facilities avoid the land use conflicts and NIMBY
• 37:48
  opposition that have stalled terrestrial data center
• 37:51
  construction across the United States and Europe.
• 37:53
  Musk has described an even more aggressive long term vision.
• 37:58
  He wants to build satellite factories on the moon and use an
• 38:01
  electromagnetic rail gun to launch EI satellites at lunar
• 38:05
  escape velocity without rockets. In his estimation, his approach
• 38:10
  could eventually deliver 100 terawatts of AI computing
• 38:13
  capacity per year into orbit. Figure sounds absurd until you
• 38:17
  remember that Musk has a track record of building things other
• 38:21
  people called impossible. Now SpaceX is not pursuing this
• 38:25
  opportunity in isolation. Jeff Bezos announced in October
• 38:29
  that Blue Origin has been developing orbital data center
• 38:32
  technology for more than a year. He predicted GW scale space data
• 38:36
  centers without 10 to 20 years and claimed they would
• 38:40
  eventually beat the cost of terrestrial facilities.
• 38:43
  Google launched Project Suncatcher in November of 2025,
• 38:47
  partnering with Planet Labs to put TPU chips on satellites
• 38:51
  launching in early 2027, and Google's research paper
• 38:54
  envisions 81 satellite clusters arranged in a 1 kilometer radius
• 38:58
  formation, communicating through free space optical links to
• 39:02
  distribute AI workloads across the constellation.
• 39:05
  The NVIDIA back startup Star Cloud already has a satellite in
• 39:09
  orbit running an H-100 GPU, successfully training Google's
• 39:13
  Jemma A1 model in space. Now Star Cloud CEO told CNBC the
• 39:20
  orbital data centers would have 10 times lower energy costs than
• 39:24
  terrestrial facilities. Company plans to build a 5 GW
• 39:27
  orbital data center with solar and cooling panels measuring
• 39:31
  roughly 4 kilometers in both width and height.
• 39:34
  Now China has entered the race with its three body computing
• 39:38
  constellation, which launched 12 satellites in May 2025 through a
• 39:42
  partnership between Zhang Zhang Lab and Alibaba Group.
• 39:46
  The financial picture for SpaceX makes the IPO timing very
• 39:50
  logical right now. Company generated roughly $15
• 39:53
  billion in revenue in 2025, is projected to hit about 24
• 39:57
  billion in 2026, putting it roughly on par with NASA's
• 40:02
  annual budget. And Starlink alone has grown to
• 40:05
  over 9 million subscribers from 4 million just 15 months
• 40:08
  earlier. Musk stated publicly the less
• 40:11
  than 5% of SpaceX revenue now comes from NASA, meaning the
• 40:15
  future of the company depends almost entirely on Starlink.
• 40:18
  SpaceX launched more than 160 Falcon 9 rockets in 2025, which
• 40:22
  is more than the rest of the world combined, and put over
• 40:25
  3200 stern like satellites into orbit during the calendar year.
• 40:29
  A single Falcon booster designated B1O67 has now
• 40:34
  launched and landed 32 times, with turn around windows as
• 40:37
  short as three weeks. The company has successful 500
• 40:41
  landings in October 2025, more than every other company in
• 40:45
  nation state combined. Blue Origin in second place has
• 40:49
  landed exactly 1. Now Mars, it remains on the
• 40:55
  forefront. It's the elephant in the room
• 40:57
  for long time SpaceX fans. Musk founded the company
• 41:00
  specifically to make humanity multiplanetary, and he spent
• 41:04
  years arguing that public shareholders would never
• 41:06
  tolerate that expense. Now, he said it would be
• 41:09
  unprofitable work of colonizing another planet.
• 41:13
  In 2023, he told Twitter followers that SpaceX would only
• 41:16
  go public when Mars Colonial transport.
• 41:19
  Now, SpaceX President Gwen Shotwell reinforced this
• 41:22
  position in 2018, saying the company would remain private
• 41:25
  until rockets were flying regularly to the Red Planet.
• 41:29
  That's not happened yet. They haven't even gotten the
• 41:31
  Starship to orbit yet, there's no in orbit refuelling, and they
• 41:35
  haven't landed on another celestial body, let alone on
• 41:40
  Mars. Starship has not completed a
• 41:42
  successful orbital mission after several explosive tests, and
• 41:45
  unaccrued flights to Mars remain at least a year away by the most
• 41:50
  optimistic projections. But that's probably not going to
• 41:52
  happen as well. Eli has stated on the record
• 41:55
  that Mars is the distraction now.
• 41:58
  Justice Parmer, CEO of Fortuna Investments and venture capital
• 42:02
  firm invested in SpaceX, said he expected an IPO to happen after
• 42:06
  Starship reaches Mars because it would remove a massive risk
• 42:10
  factor. He failed Mars attempt as a
• 42:13
  private company cause no risk, no stock fluctuation, but the
• 42:17
  same failure as a public company could hammer the share price
• 42:23
  Now. The technical challenges are
• 42:25
  substantial, but not insurmountable.
• 42:27
  Radiation in space can damage computer chips, causing bit
• 42:30
  flips and burnout that corrupt AI calculations.
• 42:34
  Space rated processors currently lag three to four orders of
• 42:38
  magnitude behind commercial hardware and raw performance,
• 42:41
  but Google estimates the space based AI computing will only
• 42:44
  become economically viable by 2035 if launch cost dropped to
• 42:49
  200 dollars per kilogram from the current 1400 to $2900 range.
• 42:56
  Starship is the key to hitting that target, which puts SpaceX
• 43:00
  in a stronger position than any other competitor.
• 43:04
  Booster 18 crumpled during a pressure test in late November
• 43:08
  and SpaceX had one choice except a months long delay.
• 43:13
  Or build another 69 meter rocket from scratch before the end of
• 43:18
  the year. Now they finished booster 19 on
• 43:21
  Christmas Eve. That four week turn around sets
• 43:24
  up the most aggressive Starship test campaign yet, with Flight
• 43:27
  12 now targeting March from a launchpad that has never flown
• 43:32
  in vehicles that have never been tested.
• 43:34
  So what happens if something else breaks between now and
• 43:36
  then? SpaceX is betting on everything.
• 43:39
  A parallel development building new pads, new vehicles, and new
• 43:43
  engines simultaneously across 2 states.
• 43:47
  Today we're going to breakdown exactly what changed in the
• 43:49
  version three hardware, why Pad 2's flame trench exists because
• 43:53
  Pad 1 failed, and what Ship 39 and Booster 19 still need to
• 43:57
  prove before they can stack up for flight.
• 44:01
  And SpaceX is preparing the most significant Starship upgrade
• 44:05
  since the program began orbital testing in 2023.
• 44:09
  The company has spent the last several months building new
• 44:11
  hardware, demolishing old infrastructure, and racing to
• 44:15
  qualify a replacement booster after an unexpected test failure
• 44:19
  derailed the original timeline. Flight 12 will serve as the
• 44:23
  proving ground for nearly every major system change SpaceX has
• 44:28
  developed over the past year. The launch infrastructure
• 44:31
  overhaul started with a very hard lesson.
• 44:34
  Pad 1S Star Base hosted all eleven previous Starship
• 44:37
  flights, but it's flat steel launch mount and lack of a flame
• 44:41
  trench created problems from the very first orbital attempt.
• 44:45
  The April 2023 launch excavated a crater beneath the pad as a
• 44:50
  brief flying across the surrounding area.
• 44:52
  SpaceX responded by adding a water cooled steel plate, but
• 44:55
  the company clearly decided that approach had limits.
• 44:58
  After Flight 11 in late 2025, SpaceX stripped Pad 1 down to
• 45:04
  rebuild it with a concrete flame trench, reinforced mount, and
• 45:08
  upgraded tower hardware. The rebuild will extend into
• 45:12
  2026. Now Pad 2 was built in parallel
• 45:17
  with those Hard One lessons already incorporated.
• 45:21
  The new pad features a concrete flame deflector with sloped
• 45:25
  walls, forming a proper trench beneath the launch mount.
• 45:29
  SpaceX completed multiple water deluge tests through this system
• 45:32
  in late 2025, verifying it can handle the thermal and acoustic
• 45:36
  load from 33 Raptor engines. The tower itself got upgraded
• 45:41
  catch arms with protective shielding to survive the plume
• 45:44
  during landing attempts. SpaceX also redesigned the
• 45:47
  propellant connections, eliminating the old on booster
• 45:50
  fuel umbilicals in favor of two dedicated quick disconnect ports
• 45:56
  mounted on the pad itself. This change completely
• 45:59
  simplifies the fueling sequence and reduces the hardware each
• 46:03
  booster needs to carry. Now the expansion extends well
• 46:08
  beyond South Texas. SpaceX has been building
• 46:11
  Starship infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center's LC39A
• 46:14
  since 2022, when the launch tower structure was completed.
• 46:18
  Throughout 2025, crews added a flame trench, mounted the
• 46:21
  chopstick catch arms and expanded the propellant tank
• 46:24
  farm. The pad still needs substantial
• 46:26
  plumbing and electrical work before it can support a launch,
• 46:29
  but SpaceX expects to fly Starship from Florida by the
• 46:33
  second-half of 2026. In late 2025, the company also
• 46:37
  received approval to develop Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape
• 46:41
  Canaveral, where construction has begun.
• 46:44
  A2 additional Starship towers combined with the two star base
• 46:47
  pads. That and LC39A combined with the
• 46:51
  two star base pads and LC39A. SpaceX will eventually operate 5
• 46:56
  Starship capable launch sites. That kind of redundancy enables
• 46:59
  the high cadence launch system in the schedule the SpaceX needs
• 47:03
  for Starlink deployment, lunar missions, and eventually Mars
• 47:07
  operations. Now a quick ask from you.
• 47:10
  If you're part of the 63% of people who aren't subscribed
• 47:13
  yet, hit that button now. I've covered Space Flight for
• 47:16
  six years. I'm not stopping.
• 47:18
  Now let's get back to the hardware.
• 47:20
  Ship 39 is the first version 3 Starship.
• 47:23
  It has been fully welded together Spacex's high base
• 47:26
  since November. The vehicle incorporates several
• 47:29
  important changes compared to earlier ships.
• 47:31
  It stands a few feet taller than its predecessors and runs on the
• 47:35
  new Raptor 3 engines, which deliver higher thrust and better
• 47:38
  fuel efficiency than the Raptor 2 units used on previous
• 47:42
  flights. The Raptor 3 achieves these
• 47:45
  gains through a simplified design that eliminates external
• 47:48
  shielding and integrates components more tightly,
• 47:51
  reducing weight while increasing chamber pressure.
• 47:54
  The power in avionic systems got upgrades to support longer
• 47:57
  missions, including enhanced battery capacity for extended
• 48:00
  coast phases and more robust flight computers.
• 48:03
  And Ship 39 also carries propellant docking ports visible
• 48:07
  on its hull purpose building hardware for orbital refueling
• 48:11
  operations. Those ports will enable the fuel
• 48:14
  transfer demonstrations the SpaceX needs to complete before
• 48:17
  SpaceX and NASA's Artemis lunar landing missions can proceed.
• 48:22
  SpaceX has contracted with NASA to use Starship as a human
• 48:26
  landing system for Artemis 3, but that mission requires
• 48:29
  proving that one Starship can transfer propellant to another
• 48:33
  in Earth's orbit. A SpaceX ran into a problem
• 48:36
  during ship preparation that required careful attention.
• 48:40
  A composite overwrapped pressure vessel, or COPD, ruptured inside
• 48:45
  an earlier prototype called Ship 36 during testing.
• 48:48
  These high pressure tanks store gases like helium that
• 48:51
  pressurize the main propellant tanks.
• 48:53
  A COPV failure during flight could be catastrophic.
• 48:57
  An engineer's recently swapped out several COPVS inside Ship 39
• 49:02
  as a precaution before the vehicle begins its test
• 49:04
  campaign. Once these preparations
• 49:06
  finished, Ship 39 will roll to the Massey test site for
• 49:09
  cryogenic proof testing on a hydraulic stand that simulates
• 49:13
  engine thrust loads. And after that comes engine
• 49:16
  installation and the first static fire of a Version 3
• 49:20
  Starship. Booster 19's rapid assembly
• 49:24
  deserves closer attention, too. SpaceX originally built Booster
• 49:28
  18 as the first Block 3 Super Heavy, but that vehicle buckled
• 49:31
  during a pressurization test in late November.
• 49:34
  The failure destroyed the prototype and threatened to
• 49:37
  pressure and push Flight 12 well into 2026.
• 49:42
  A booster crumpling under pressure usually indicates A
• 49:44
  structural weakness on procedural error during the
• 49:47
  test, and either scenario would normally trigger a lengthy
• 49:51
  investigation before building a replacement.
• 49:54
  And instead of accepting that delay, SpaceX pivoted to booster
• 49:57
  19 and finished stacking the 69 meter vehicle by December 24th.
• 50:03
  That's about four weeks from failure to complete an assembly
• 50:07
  on a replacement booster, which demonstrates how mature Spacex's
• 50:11
  production line has become. The company posted a photo
• 50:14
  showing the fully stacked booster in the Mega Bay, a
• 50:16
  stainless steel skin gleaming under the facility lights.
• 50:20
  And SpaceX now has enough experience building Super Heavy
• 50:23
  boosters that losing 1 prototype to a test failure no longer
• 50:27
  derails the entire program schedule.
• 50:30
  The Block 3 design includes several visible hardware
• 50:33
  changes. Booster 19 has an integrated hot
• 50:36
  staging ray at its top, which allowed ship 39 S engines to
• 50:40
  ignite before stage separation. While the boosters engines are
• 50:43
  still running, that technique extracts more performance from
• 50:47
  the system, but requires additional venting and
• 50:50
  structural reinforcement to handle the stress.
• 50:52
  Previous Starship flights used a detachable hot staging adapter.
• 50:56
  The added weight and complexity. The integrated design eliminates
• 50:59
  that hardware entirely, and the booster also carries just three
• 51:02
  grid fins instead of four. These new fins are roughly 50%
• 51:06
  larger than the previous design and built to survive the loads
• 51:09
  from a tower catch. SpaceX expects the larger
• 51:13
  surface area to provide better control authority during the
• 51:16
  boost back and landing birds, and the propellant feed system
• 51:19
  got to redesign as well, with a more robust down Comer tube size
• 51:23
  for the higher pressure and flow rates that Raptor 3 demands.
• 51:29
  The test campaign ahead will determine whether March 2026
• 51:32
  remains realistic for Flight 12. SpaceX needs to transport
• 51:36
  Booster 19 to Massey for a full cryogenic proof test, filling
• 51:41
  the tanks with liquid nitrogen to verify structural integrity
• 51:44
  under pressure. The proof test will push the
• 51:47
  tank walls to flight level stresses without the risk of
• 51:49
  engine ignition, and if that succeeds, the booster moves to
• 51:53
  Pad 2 for a static fire that will also validate the new flame
• 51:57
  deflector and water Dillard system under live conditions.
• 52:01
  That static fire will be the first time that Pad 2's
• 52:03
  infrastructure faces a full 33 engine firing.
• 52:07
  Ship 39 follows a similar path, cryogenic proof testing, engine
• 52:12
  installation, and static fire. Both vehicles need to clear
• 52:16
  these checkpoints before SpaceX can stack them for Flight 12.
• 52:20
  The Flight 12 will attempt several objectives.
• 52:22
  If it launches as planned, the mission will be the first from
• 52:26
  pad twos upgraded infrastructure, and the first
• 52:28
  using all Raptor 3 engines. SpaceX may also attempt another
• 52:33
  booster catch with the tower arms building on the successful
• 52:35
  catches from Flights 10 and 11, and the hot staging sequence
• 52:39
  with the integrated ring will be another first for this
• 52:42
  configuration. Each of these elements carries
• 52:44
  risk, but SpaceX has shown a willingness to accept test
• 52:47
  failures in exchange for faster iteration.
• 52:51
  Now, SpaceX has assembled Ship 39 and Booster 19 as the first
• 52:55
  Version 3 Starship vehicles, targeting a March 2020 sixth
• 52:58
  launch from the newly completed Pad 2 as Starbase.
• 53:02
  The company is rebuilding pad one with a flame trench,
• 53:04
  expanding to three. SpaceX has assembled Ship 39 and
• 53:11
  Booster 19 as the first Version 3 Starship vehicles, targeting a
• 53:15
  March 2026 launch from a newly completed Pad 2.
• 53:20
  If they get this done in time at Star Base, well, the company is
• 53:23
  rebuilding pad one as well, with a flame trench expanding to
• 53:26
  three additional pads in Florida, and preparing both
• 53:29
  vehicles for cryo proof tests and static fires in the coming
• 53:32
  weeks. It's going to be exciting.
• 53:34
  Flight 12 will test new engines, new infrastructure, and new
• 53:37
  hardware configurations in one single mission.
• 53:43
  Silicon Valley startup Tensor just unveiled a $200,000 luxury
• 53:50
  electric SUV designed from the ground up to drive itself
• 53:54
  without anyone behind the wheel. This isn't a Tesla.
• 53:57
  This is better, actually. The company plans to deliver the
• 54:01
  first consumer owned level 4 autonomous vehicle by late 2026,
• 54:07
  meaning the car handles all the driving in approved zones
• 54:10
  without human supervision. And Tensor packed this thing
• 54:13
  with over 100 sensors, 8 NVIDIA processors, and a folding
• 54:18
  steering wheel that disappears into the dashboard when you're
• 54:21
  not using it. This thing is like a
• 54:22
  transformer. But will people be willing to
• 54:26
  actually trust a machine enough to hand over the keys to a
• 54:30
  $200,000 investment? Now, Lyft just reserved hundreds
• 54:35
  of these robocars for its own fleet.
• 54:37
  And that deal includes something I haven't seen before.
• 54:41
  And we're going to cover the hardware that separates this
• 54:43
  vehicle from anything that Tesla or Waymo offers.
• 54:46
  Now, there's a regulatory maze that Tensor still needs to
• 54:50
  navigate and why Lyft's purchase could change how we think about
• 54:54
  owning a car. And we'll get right into that
• 54:56
  right after this very short break.
• 55:00
  Now, Tensor's robocar enters a market where no company has sold
• 55:03
  a Level 4 autonomous vehicle to individual buyers.
• 55:07
  The startup spent nearly a decade in stealth mode, building
• 55:10
  proprietary technology after walking away from robotaxi
• 55:14
  operations in China. Now, this thing is a sleek
• 55:19
  crossover SUV, and it is covered in Lidar sensors and cameras.
• 55:26
  No drivers needed. That's the product that Tensor
• 55:29
  wants to put in your driveway. Production will be handled by
• 55:32
  Vietnamese automaker Vinfast at its factory in Haipong, which
• 55:38
  will deliver them starting in the United Arab Emirates before
• 55:43
  reaching American customers. Now let's start with the
• 55:46
  hardware, though. Tensor fitted the Ruble car with
• 55:48
  37 cameras, 5 custom lidar units, 11 radars, 22
• 55:53
  microphones, 10 ultrasonic sensors, and 16 collision
• 55:58
  detectors. That sensor count puts pressure
• 56:01
  on every competitor, and lighter is the spinning laser system
• 56:05
  that creates a 3D map of everything around the car.
• 56:08
  The rooftop unit scans 360° and detects objects nearly 1000 feet
• 56:13
  away. Cameras mounted underneath the
• 56:15
  chassis address a blind spot that has caused problems for
• 56:18
  other autonomous systems. And that is something that I
• 56:22
  haven't really seen too much of now.
• 56:24
  The primary Lidar unit, called Tensor Halo, emits 25.6 million
• 56:29
  beams per second. That creates what the company
• 56:32
  describes as a 360 degree safety shield around the vehicle.
• 56:36
  Four additional blindspot lidars cover areas the main unit cannot
• 56:40
  reach. 6 Hyper radars detect both stationary and moving
• 56:44
  objects across all distances using 4D tech imaging for
• 56:50
  external microphone overlays. Locate emergency vehicle sirens
• 56:53
  before they become visible so the car can pull over safely
• 56:56
  without visual confirmation. Most autonomous vehicle
• 57:00
  developers retrofit existing car platforms with sensors bolted on
• 57:04
  afterwards, and Tensor designed every surface to optimize sensor
• 57:08
  placement from the first sketch. Now 8 NVIDIA Dr. EGX 4 chips sit
• 57:18
  inside what Tensor calls an onboard supercomputer.
• 57:21
  The system processes over 53 gigabits of sensor data per
• 57:26
  second. For context, that's roughly 1000
• 57:30
  times faster than typical home Internet speeds.
• 57:33
  The AI runs on transformer based models trained on data from
• 57:37
  expert human drivers. A separate visual language model
• 57:41
  handles edge cases and unexpected scenarios, and edge
• 57:45
  cases are the weird situations that normal driving patterns
• 57:48
  don't prepare you for. If there's construction on the
• 57:51
  road, maybe there's a cone in the middle of the road and they
• 57:53
  have to go around it. That's one of those weird
• 57:56
  situations, and maybe the cone is tipped over, or maybe there's
• 58:00
  like some bigger rocks in the road or something, some random
• 58:03
  stuff in the road. Tensor engineer this
• 58:06
  supercomputer for 10 years or 180,000 miles of operation.
• 58:11
  That's really good. Advanced liquid cooling
• 58:14
  maintains peak performance across extreme temperatures.
• 58:17
  There is a dual power architecture that's provides
• 58:20
  full redundancies with multiple power sources ensuring
• 58:23
  continuous operation, and every computation happens locally on
• 58:28
  the vehicle. There's no cloud, and Tensor
• 58:31
  designed the system to work without cloud connectivity,
• 58:34
  storing all travel data exclusively on the car itself.
• 58:40
  Now, you can upgrade over the cloud, of course, over the air
• 58:44
  upgrading, that's a thing, and that's going to be happening
• 58:47
  with the Tensor vehicles. But all the data for your own
• 58:49
  vehicle never gets shared in the cloud, and owners can disable
• 58:54
  remote access entirely and control data through an
• 58:57
  encrypted smartphone app. Physical cameras can be covered
• 59:03
  and microphones can be switched off, and that can all be done
• 59:07
  with the app, too. Now, I've been digging through
• 59:09
  the analytics of this show and notice that 37% of you are
• 59:13
  following this channel. For you, I am forever grateful
• 59:15
  you remembered to hit the subscribe button.
• 59:17
  Now there's 63% of you that probably listen to an episode or
• 59:21
  two or just fighting the show. And if you listened to this
• 59:23
  before, thank you so much. And you probably just forgot to
• 59:26
  hit the follower subscribe button, and that's OK.
• 59:30
  I just ask you if you could do that real quick.
• 59:32
  I've been doing this as an independent journalist covering
• 59:35
  Elon Musk, SpaceX, Space Flight and tech for the last six or
• 59:39
  seven years. I'm going to continue for the
• 59:41
  next 10 years, and I need your help.
• 59:43
  And all I ask from you is one second of your time, and I'm
• 59:46
  going to give you 10 more years of mine.
• 59:48
  All you got to do is hit the follow or subscribe button on
• 59:50
  the platform you're watching on right now.
• 59:52
  And I'd be extremely grateful and blessed to have you here if
• 59:57
  you do that. So thank you.
• 1:00:00
  Tents are built A $200,000 SUV with over 100 sensors.
• 1:00:06
  Massive onboard computing. And a privacy first architecture
• 1:00:09
  that keeps your data away from big tech.
• 1:00:14
  Now let's talk about what this thing actually looks like.
• 1:00:16
  Inside. There's a folding steering
• 1:00:19
  wheel. The dash opens up and the
• 1:00:22
  steering wheel retracts into the dash.
• 1:00:26
  If you don't want to drive, this thing can drive you anywhere you
• 1:00:29
  want. You can ask it to drive you to
• 1:00:31
  the store. So if you want to spend a bunch
• 1:00:33
  of time shopping, like 2 hours shopping and you live 10 minutes
• 1:00:38
  from the store, but you don't want to walk because you have a
• 1:00:40
  bunch of bags and you know you're going to be there for a
• 1:00:42
  few hours, you don't need your car to sit there for two hours,
• 1:00:45
  right? So you send it home.
• 1:00:47
  You can just say drop me off at the store, I'm going to be there
• 1:00:51
  for two hours, pick me up two hours later, go home for now and
• 1:00:57
  the car will do it. It's just crazy, right?
• 1:01:02
  There's no pedals because they disappear into the foot bed.
• 1:01:07
  The center display slides over to face the former driver's
• 1:01:10
  seat, which becomes a reclining lounge chair with massage,
• 1:01:13
  heating and cooling. If you just want this thing to
• 1:01:16
  drive you around and it's going to be luxury all the time, a
• 1:01:22
  massage chair in your car and you're just sitting there
• 1:01:26
  hanging out. Tensor claims 29 storage
• 1:01:29
  compartments fold flat seats for items up to 10 feet long in a
• 1:01:35
  dedicated pet mode that lets your vehicles transport animals
• 1:01:37
  without you even being there. That's pretty wild.
• 1:01:42
  The vehicle targets a luxury crossover segment, though with
• 1:01:44
  dimensions matching a full size Suva 112 kWh battery provides an
• 1:01:50
  estimated 250 miles of range. The 845 Volt architecture
• 1:01:54
  enables charging from 20 to 80% in roughly 10 minutes at peak
• 1:01:59
  power around 400 kilowatts. That opens up long distance
• 1:02:03
  travel in ways current E VS struggle with Tensor developed
• 1:02:07
  compatibility with robotic charging systems from from Rock
• 1:02:10
  Sys and Bros, allowing the car to plug itself in without human
• 1:02:13
  intervention. Run flat tires let the vehicle
• 1:02:17
  continue driving up to 45 mph for an hour after a puncture.
• 1:02:22
  That gives the autonomous system time to reach a safe location
• 1:02:24
  and pull off RGB mini LED display panels on the exterior.
• 1:02:29
  Communicate the vehicle's intentions to pedestrians and
• 1:02:32
  cyclists. Coach style doors feature radar
• 1:02:36
  based obstacle detection too. You have soft close motors and
• 1:02:40
  they can de ice themselves too. Now we have to talk about Lyft
• 1:02:44
  too because remember when I said that in the beginning of this
• 1:02:46
  show? Lyft is going to be a partner
• 1:02:50
  for this crew here. Lyft's partnership adds a
• 1:02:55
  economic base for Tensor. Tensor will ship from Vietnamese
• 1:03:00
  manufacturer Vinfast with Lyft's platform pre installed.
• 1:03:05
  That changes everything completely.
• 1:03:07
  You can deploy your personal vehicle on Lyft's rideshare
• 1:03:09
  networks in markets where Level 4 autonomy is permitted.
• 1:03:13
  The car earns money while parked in your driveway.
• 1:03:16
  You can let it go wild. Say if you're going to the
• 1:03:18
  store, you know you're going to be there for two hours, tell it,
• 1:03:23
  hey, shift into lift mode, go get some, go make some money.
• 1:03:28
  So whenever you're just doing those two hours of drives, it
• 1:03:31
  makes the money back for the things that you buy.
• 1:03:34
  So it's a way for you to make residual income.
• 1:03:40
  Maybe let your car do the work for you.
• 1:03:41
  Remember when Elon Musk said this a while ago, years and
• 1:03:45
  years ago, probably 10 years ago, he would say you could just
• 1:03:48
  leave your car in the parking lot all day, right?
• 1:03:52
  But with a Tesla, you could let it do a robo taxi for you and
• 1:03:58
  Uber people around for you and make money for you while you're
• 1:04:01
  at work. You're working for 8 hours.
• 1:04:03
  What's your car doing? It's just sitting there in the
• 1:04:04
  parking lot doing nothing, not earning you money.
• 1:04:09
  So this is that, but before Tesla, right?
• 1:04:13
  So Lyft and Tensor together. Lyft just leapfrog Tesla and
• 1:04:20
  Tensor if they actually do this by the end of 2026.
• 1:04:23
  If they ship this and it actually works, Tesla has some
• 1:04:28
  major competition. Even though it's a $200,000 car,
• 1:04:33
  it is something that Tesla hasn't been able to do yet.
• 1:04:37
  Now the car earns money whenever you want it to.
• 1:04:41
  You're at work 8 hours? OK, cool.
• 1:04:44
  Have the car pick you up when you're done at work, drop you
• 1:04:46
  off at home, and then go out and earn you more money.
• 1:04:50
  That would be amazing. Lyft's fleet management subsidy,
• 1:04:53
  Flexdrive, will handle cleaning, charging, and maintenance for
• 1:04:56
  owners who participate. So not only do you get this
• 1:05:01
  vehicle that's going to make you money, maybe it'll make your
• 1:05:03
  money back, maybe you'll make $200,000 in the first year that
• 1:05:06
  you do it because this thing can run 24/7.
• 1:05:09
  Who knows how much money you can make.
• 1:05:11
  But then Flexdrive, they'll clean it, charge it and maintain
• 1:05:15
  it for you, so you don't have to do any of that stuff.
• 1:05:18
  A $200,000 car normally depreciates the moment it leaves
• 1:05:22
  a lot and sits idle 95% of its life.
• 1:05:24
  It doesn't. You don't really do anything
• 1:05:26
  with your car. Like right now, my car's in my
• 1:05:27
  driveway. It's not doing anything.
• 1:05:30
  A robocar generating rideshare income could theoretically
• 1:05:33
  offset that decline through productive use.
• 1:05:37
  The company reserved hundreds of robocars for its fleet, lifted
• 1:05:42
  through its affiliates pending regulatory approval.
• 1:05:44
  Of course, that marks a big shift for Lyft.
• 1:05:47
  Lyft previously focused on facilitating rides through its
• 1:05:50
  app or providing fleet management services and never
• 1:05:53
  owned those vehicles. Uber has signed more than a
• 1:05:56
  dozen agreements globally with autonomous developers and
• 1:05:59
  pledged to deploy at least 20,000 Lucid and Neuro robotaxi
• 1:06:03
  starting next year. The Tensor deal gives Lyft a
• 1:06:06
  vehicle specifically engineered for rideshare duty with sensors
• 1:06:10
  designed for a decade of commercial use.
• 1:06:14
  So even when you're done with this car, say if you upgrade to
• 1:06:17
  something else and you're just like, you know what, I want to
• 1:06:19
  keep this car going so it can do lift for me and I keep earning
• 1:06:23
  money with it. Maybe you do that.
• 1:06:25
  There's so many options for you now that you can actually do
• 1:06:28
  this. Tesla hasn't done this yet.
• 1:06:30
  So everybody with a Tesla, and if you aren't able to do this by
• 1:06:34
  the end of 2026, Tensor is ahead of Tesla if that's the case.
• 1:06:39
  So what do we know about this regulatory path I was talking
• 1:06:42
  about earlier? Tensor holds a California DOV
• 1:06:45
  permit for driverless testing, but has not secured CPUC
• 1:06:50
  authorization to deploy vehicles to the public without safety
• 1:06:54
  drivers. CPUC is the California Public
• 1:06:57
  Utilities Commission, the agency that grants commercial permits
• 1:07:00
  for robo taxis. Only Waymo has obtained that
• 1:07:04
  permit that limits where Tensor can launch.
• 1:07:06
  Initial deliveries will go to the United Arab Emirates in late
• 1:07:09
  2026. Or regulatory frameworks differ
• 1:07:12
  from the US American deliveries will follow in early 2027,
• 1:07:16
  pending approvals, and the company operates in geofence
• 1:07:19
  zones for a fully automated vehicles, allowing manual
• 1:07:23
  driving outside of approved areas.
• 1:07:26
  So what's next for Tensor? It's a crazy ride already,
• 1:07:31
  right? Tensor evolved from Auto XA
• 1:07:34
  former MITPHD in Princeton assistant professor known
• 1:07:38
  professionally as Professor X Auto X operated over 1000 robo
• 1:07:43
  taxis across 5 Chinese cities during the pandemic.
• 1:07:47
  That was one of the largest fully driverless fleets globally
• 1:07:50
  at that time. The company established
• 1:07:51
  manufacturing facilities near Shanghai and maintained
• 1:07:54
  operation centers across 65 square miles of Shengzhen.
• 1:07:59
  Now, Auto X began testing on public roads in California back
• 1:08:02
  in 2017 and secured California's second ever driverless testing
• 1:08:06
  permit in 2020. That gives Tensor years of real
• 1:08:09
  world data that most competitors lack.
• 1:08:12
  Now Auto X fully divested all China operations and
• 1:08:15
  discontinued the brand to focus on American, European and Middle
• 1:08:18
  Eastern markets. Tensor maintains headquarters in
• 1:08:20
  San Jose with satellite offices in Spain, the UAE and Singapore.
• 1:08:25
  The company claims ownership and controlled by US employees, with
• 1:08:28
  majority investment for the UK, Japan, Korea and the United
• 1:08:31
  States. Recent reports indicate Tensor
• 1:08:33
  may raise 300 to $400 million in pre IPO funding while working
• 1:08:38
  with Royal Bank of Canada, potentially listing on US
• 1:08:41
  exchanges by late 2026 or early 2027.
• 1:08:45
  Now, that funding timeline aligns with vehicle deliveries,
• 1:08:48
  giving investors a chance to bet on consumer adoption personal
• 1:08:51
  autonomous vehicles. Before Tensor proved that the
• 1:08:54
  market actually exists, TikTok officially signed the deal to
• 1:09:00
  spin off its American operations to a group of US investors led
• 1:09:05
  by Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi based MGX.
• 1:09:10
  The new joint venture gives American entities 80.1%
• 1:09:13
  ownership of the platform serving 170 million US users,
• 1:09:17
  while Bytedance keeps 19.9%, just one of a percent point
• 1:09:23
  below the legal cap that would trigger a ban on the app.
• 1:09:27
  Now the deal closes a chapter that started with bipartisan
• 1:09:30
  legislation, survived a Supreme Court challenge and forced the
• 1:09:34
  app to go dark for 14 hours last January.
• 1:09:37
  But did Congress actually get what it wanted when it passed
• 1:09:40
  that law? Now it will license its
• 1:09:43
  algorithm to the new American entity, and Oracle will retrain
• 1:09:47
  it using only US user data. We're going to break down who
• 1:09:51
  owns what in this $14 billion venture, why critics say the
• 1:09:55
  deal may not satisfy the original law, and why Bytedance
• 1:09:58
  still controls Tiktok shop in advertising even after the spin
• 1:10:02
  off. And we'll get right into that
• 1:10:04
  right after this very short break.
• 1:10:08
  A Tiktok operates under a new corporate structure called
• 1:10:11
  Tiktok USDS Joint Venture LLC after both the Trump
• 1:10:16
  administration and the Chinese government signed off, and a
• 1:10:19
  presser who previously ran Tiktok's operations and trust
• 1:10:22
  and safety division takes over as the CEO of the ownership.
• 1:10:27
  Split into 3 tiers, Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX hold 15%
• 1:10:32
  each as managing investors with decision making power.
• 1:10:36
  Another 35.1 goes to 8 investors, including Michael
• 1:10:40
  Dell's office, Susquehanna International Group and existing
• 1:10:44
  Bytedance backers like KKR and General Atlantic.
• 1:10:48
  Bytedance retains 19.9%. Vice President JD Vance cited a
• 1:10:53
  $14 billion valuation, though by Dance as a whole is worth 480
• 1:10:59
  billion. The deal bundles in Cap Cut and
• 1:11:02
  Lemon 8. Alongside TikTok, Oracle will
• 1:11:05
  store all US user data in its domestic cloud, review source
• 1:11:09
  code continuously, and retrain the recommendation algorithm
• 1:11:14
  exclusively on American data. That retraining could take
• 1:11:18
  months and may produce different content patterns and users
• 1:11:22
  currently experience. Larry Ellison, Oracle's Co
• 1:11:25
  founder and Trump supporter, positioned the company as Tik
• 1:11:28
  Tok's trusted security partner. The seven member board leans
• 1:11:32
  American with six US residents, though global TikTok CEO Xiao
• 1:11:37
  Chu gets a seat alongside executives from Oracle,
• 1:11:40
  Silverlake and MGX. The legal question centers on
• 1:11:43
  whether the structure actually complies with the 2024 law.
• 1:11:47
  Congress prohibited any operational relationship between
• 1:11:50
  Bytedance in a new ownership group, explicitly barring
• 1:11:54
  cooperation in the algorithm. Bytedance licensing that
• 1:11:58
  algorithm to the US entity may not satisfy that requirement.
• 1:12:02
  The Justice Department argued in a July 2024 filing that ensuring
• 1:12:06
  compliance, which require resources far beyond what the
• 1:12:09
  government and Oracle possess. Tik Tok's lawyers counted that
• 1:12:13
  rebuilding the algorithm from scratch would take years.
• 1:12:16
  Congress left it to the president to decide what
• 1:12:19
  qualifies as legitimate diversification, giving Trump
• 1:12:23
  wide latitude. Now Bytedance retains control
• 1:12:27
  over significant business operations beyond its ownership
• 1:12:30
  stake. TikTok Shop, the fast growing
• 1:12:32
  e-commerce feature, stays under Bytedance control.
• 1:12:36
  The advertising division generating billions from
• 1:12:38
  American brands also remains with the Chinese parent in the
• 1:12:42
  US entity handles data protection, content moderation
• 1:12:45
  and algorithm security. But the commercial engine runs
• 1:12:49
  through Byte Dance. Georgetown law professor Atapan
• 1:12:53
  Chandler raised a different concern.
• 1:12:56
  They said American investors now control who sees what on TikTok
• 1:12:59
  in the United States. The algorithm servicing videos
• 1:13:02
  to 170 million Americans will answer to a board that includes
• 1:13:06
  major Trump supporters with their own political and
• 1:13:09
  commercial agendas. The deal may address fears about
• 1:13:12
  Chinese influence by concentrating the same power of
• 1:13:16
  that influence into American influence.
• 1:13:19
  President Trump celebrated on true social, thanking Xi Jinping
• 1:13:23
  for approving the deal and crediting TikTok with helping
• 1:13:25
  him win the youth vote in 2024. The saga that began when he
• 1:13:30
  tried to ban TikTok in 2020 ended with a deal that keeps
• 1:13:33
  Byte Dance involved while transferring majority control to
• 1:13:36
  his allies. Republican Representative John
• 1:13:39
  Molinear, who chairs the House China Committee, said his panel
• 1:13:44
  will hold hearings to examine whether the deal actually
• 1:13:46
  prevents CCP influence over the algorithm.
• 1:13:49
  The Tik Tok's US spin off closes the five year geopolitical
• 1:13:53
  battle. Oracle Silver Lake in MGX
• 1:13:57
  control 45% of the new venture while Bytedance at 19.9.
• 1:14:02
  The algorithm will be retrained on American data in Oracle's
• 1:14:05
  cloud. The Bytedance keeps e-commerce
• 1:14:08
  and advertising credits. Question whether the deal
• 1:14:12
  satisfies Congress prohibition on operational relationships and
• 1:14:15
  house hearings. Will examine the arrangement
• 1:14:18
  very soon. We're going to see where this
• 1:14:20
  heads. Stay tuned For more information
• 1:14:22
  on this. We're going to have it as it
• 1:14:23
  develops. And if you found this breakdown
• 1:14:26
  useful, the best way to support the show is through our Patreon,
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• 1:14:33
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  last six or seven years and your support keeps this whole program
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  going. O hit the follow subscribe
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  button on whatever platform you're on right now and that'll
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• 1:14:52
  this community. Thank you again.
• 1:14:55
  Take Care now.