Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss. The critical crossroads.
That shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neurolink.
I'm your host, Will Walden. Open AI now carries a higher
valuation in secondary markets than SpaceX.
That shift forces the question upon us all.
Why are investors putting more weight on a chatbot company than
the most successful private space company in history?
Are they taking down Elon? Employees selling their shares
and Open AI have priced the company at more than $90
billion. Actual buyers are willing to pay
this. That puts Open AI paper worth
above SpaceX, which has recently been trading closer to 80
billion, down from a peak of 150 billion ish now.
The difference comes from how each company makes money.
SpaceX earns revenue through launches and Starlink
subscriptions, and both demand huge amounts of capital and long
project timelines. Open AI generates cash by
running software at scale. Jet, GBT plus subscriptions,
enterprise integrations and it's API business are high margin
streams that turn models into recurring revenue on a second to
second basis. The opening eye expects more
than a billion dollars in annual revenue, a number that seemed
unrealistic just two years ago. Now, that growth fuels investor
belief that the company can keep compounding revenue without
needing the kind of infrastructure build out this
space launches require. The speed of adoption also
matters. ChatGPT became one of the
fastest apps to reach 100 million users, creating cultural
pull that SpaceX has just never had.
SpaceX has installed, though it's continuing to dominate the
launch market and expand Starlink into global broadband
coverage. Evaluation depends on where
investors see the strongest future gains.
Right now, AI is the future. Rockets deliver contracts
though, and AI and software delivers those growth curves up
and to the right. I want to make a quick statement
here. I've been sick for a little
while now, last two ish weeks, 2-3 weeks.
So I apologize if my shows haven't been up to date.
So when he reached out to me, somebody meant to comment and
they said, you know, hey, we're I wanted the newest news and I'm
thinking like I can't even talk. How am I supposed to do this?
I have about 1000 episodes and through those episodes I've only
been sick a few times. I've been doing this for six or
seven years now and during that whole time I rarely went back
into the archives to put something out just because one
thing or another happens. Life happens.
So I do apologize for that and I hope you will continue to listen
to the show. Now, if you're a long time
subscriber or follower of the show, I really do appreciate
you, but I need your help. If you like the show and you
like what I do with it, please take a second and give us a five
star rating on whatever podcast app you're on right now.
You don't know how much this helps.
If you want me to keep doing this show, please do that.
If we can get 25 star reviews in the next few days, that would
Jack us right to some crazy amount of of spread, spread of
the knowledge that we have of Elon.
And we're going to continue doing this for a very long time.
Been doing it for seven years now.
I'm not going to stop. So I need your help though.
Five star review, please. I appreciate you.
Now let's get back into some Elon news because open AI is,
you know, they're coming after him.
We know how Elon and Open AI don't really get along either.
So the Microsoft partnership further pushes Open AI's edge
and by embedding opening eyes models into Windows often and at
Office and Azure, Microsoft has given its distribution that no
competitor can even match. It's on every desktop computer
basically. SpaceX doesn't have that kind of
consumer facing pipeline. They work with NASA and private
companies that launch satellites and people too.
It's contracts with NASA and the Pentagon secure cash flow, but
they don't create mass market lock in the way the ChatGPT
does. Like I said before, ChatGPT
people sign up every second. People don't launch rockets
every second and they don't get contracts every second.
They do get big contracts of SpaceX for millions or billions
of dollars, but nothing like open AI and chap TPT which can
get that money much faster and up and to the right.
Unlike SpaceX, which has to wait for wait for these contracts and
fight for these contracts now. Elon Musk's connection adds
another layer of irony here. He Co founded Open AI before
leaving in 2018 after a dispute over its direction.
Now the company that he helped launch has eclipse SpaceX and
valuation. His response has been to build
XAI in its crock chatbot inside of X.
But that product is far behind Open AI in market traction.
The way investors allocate capital shows a broader shift to
space infrastructure is long term intangible.
It's things you can actually go up and touch a rocket.
AI software is immediate and it's scalable.
You build more data centers. Investors prefer businesses that
can grow without hardware bottlenecks.
Spacex's Starship, it takes years for them to get a Starship
off the ground while used to. And now they do it every 3-4
months and hopefully they want to do it every few days.
But right now it's a hardware bottleneck, and Open AI shares
now command more than those of SpaceX in private markets
because of this. The comparison also shows how
narratives shape this value. SpaceX put satellites in orbit
and lands rockets vertically, but it operates largely behind
the scenes in secrecy. Except for when you're on Hwy. 4
and you can watch Starship being built at Starbase.
Open the eye through ChatGPT has become part of daily life for
students, developers, enterprises, business people.
Everybody uses ChatGPT. If you don't use ChatGPT, you're
one of the few. Now that visibility translate
into more demand for its shares too, and also more money for
open AI. SpaceX is still one of the most
important private companies in the world.
They're going to fly us to Mars. That's going to be the most
important feat in all of human history.
Open AI will just be a chat bot at that point.
Open the Eye has reached a point where it's influence, revenue
growth and investor appetite have given it the crown as the
most valuable US startup. What do you think Elon thinks
about this? Let me know in the comments.
Now. 2025 software built to protect the predict the next
word is worth more to investors than rockets that will
potentially lead humanity to a habitat on another planet.
Think about that for a moment. What's more important to you?
What's more important to humanity?
A chat bot, open AI with AGI or landing people on Mars?
Let me know in the comments. Thanks for listening everybody.
Like I said before, I'm a little bit, as you can tell, a little
stuffy and have had a horrific 3 weeks of sickness so I
appreciate you sticking around and it will get better from now
on. Take care, everybody.
Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
I really do appreciate your support.
If you could take a second and hit this subscribe or the follow
button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
to patreon.com/stagezero and please take care of yourselves
and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.