One man. One trillion dollars.
Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on Thursday after SpaceX, his rocket, satellite internet, and artificial intelligence company, announced that it had sold all 555,555,555 shares available in its initial public offering at $135 per share.
Musk’s ownership of roughly half of SpaceX’s stock is valued at $867 billion. Many of those shares, however, could only be sold by Musk if he achieves several fantastical goals, including establishing a one-million-person colony on Mars. The shares he holds in Tesla are worth about $233 billion, putting his net worth in excess of $1.1 trillion, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Despite its impossibly large valuation, SpaceX lost $4.9 billion last year and another $4.3 billion in the first quarter of this year alone. “We have a history of net losses and may not achieve profitability in the future,” the company acknowledged in its prospectus. SpaceX has staked the vast majority of its value on dubious claims that it can create space-based technologies and markets that do not yet exist.
Still, the company managed to raise $75 billion on Thursday in what was the largest IPO in history. Trading of SPCX shares is set to begin on Friday.
This Week in Musk:
A coalition of environmental groups and tribal organizations has filed a lawsuit to stop the US Fish and Wildlife Service from giving SpaceX 715 acres of public land in South Texas. While SpaceX has committed to giving the agency 683 acres of its land in exchange, the public land the company would receive is part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, which is a habitat for the endangered ocelot and threatened piping plover. The lawsuit alleges the exchange violates federal conservation law, which requires that refuge land transfers produce a net conservation benefit. (Center for Biological Diversity)
Last week, Musk shared a post on X, the social media platform he owns, agreeing with the claim that “Certain ethnic minorities are imprisoned more not because there is a bais against them, but because they commit more crime.” (X)
A former employee has sued xAI, claiming that he was fired for warning “that xAI’s failure to prioritize AI safety, particularly with respect to Grok, virtually guaranteed that the Company would commit unlawful acts, from fomenting discrimination to proliferating weapons of mass destruction,” per the lawsuit. (Reuters)
The chief legal officer for Memphis, Tennessee, has said the city will take land back from xAI if the company has “not made substantial progress” toward constructing a wastewater recycling facility by next May. xAI, now a subsidiary of SpaceX, indefinitely stalled construction of the plant in April after years of promising to build it. (WREG)
Google has agreed to pay SpaceX $920 million per month for computational power from xAI’s data centers. The deal is set to last from October 2026 to June 2029 and authorizes Google’s use of approximately 110,000 Nvidia AI chips. (TechCrunch)
CBS correspondent accuses Bari Weiss of demanding protesters killed by the police appear “more violent”
Former 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley accused Bari Weiss, the right-wing boss of CBS News, of pressuring his team to make Renée Good and Alex Pretti appear “more violent” in a February report.
Good and Pretti were US citizens who were killed by Department of Homeland Security agents in Minneapolis in January while protesting the Trump administration’s targeting of immigrants.
“I instructed my producers to find images in which we see the protesters acting aggressively,” Pelley said in an interview with the New York Times, adding, “We also included a picture of Alex Pretti before he was killed, kicking out a taillight on a police car, and made a point of saying, ‘This is Alex Pretti, and this is what he did.’”
He continued: “Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, ‘Can we make the protesters look more violent?’ Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renée Good’s car. ‘You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.’” (Good, in fact, was attempting to drive away from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers when she was shot and killed by an agent.)
Pelley was recently fired from 60 Minutes for criticizing Weiss and her newly installed executive producer. Weiss answers to Paramount CEO David Ellison, the scion of centibillionaire Larry Ellison. Both Ellison men are friends of Donald Trump and are seeking his regulatory approval in their attempt to take control of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.
In apparent efforts to win the White House’s approval, the younger Ellison and his underlings at CBS News have repeatedly sought to warp the network’s coverage to make it more suitable for Trump, causing internal discord. Scores of prominent journalists, including CBS News veterans, signed a letter last week calling for the younger Ellison to ensure the editorial independence of 60 Minutes. In response, Ellison reportedly told Lesley Stahl, one of the few remaining 60 Minutes correspondents, that he would respect the show’s independence.
If the Ellisons do secure a Paramount-Warner merger, Weiss, a longtime lapdog for Silicon Valley’s billionaires, is likely to be given combined editorial control of CBS News and CNN, according to a Tuesday report from Axios.
Several US states, including New York and California, reportedly plan to file a lawsuit to block Paramount’s acquisition of Warner. The challenge could end up costing the Ellisons, given that Paramount has agreed to pay Warner shareholders roughly $6.9 million per day if the merger is delayed beyond September 30.
Meta promises to train new skilled workforce to build its data centers
After firing approximately 8,000 white-collar employees last month as part of its artificial intelligence overhaul, Meta has launched a program to quickly train trade workers to build its data centers.
The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company plans to spend $115 million on its “workforce academy,” which will debut in Ohio, Indiana, Texas, and Louisiana. Trainees will take part in a tuition-free program lasting five weeks. Graduates have been promised work at one of Meta’s data centers.
“If America doesn’t come together and ensure that we, frankly, treat these workers as the American heroes that they are, without them, we can’t compete with China,” Dina Powell McCormick, Meta’s president, said on Fox Business this week.
Given the wiring and cooling needs of data centers, demand for electricians and HVAC technicians has far exceeded the available workforce. How long that demand will last remains unclear, as the vast majority of skilled laborers are employed only during the construction phase of a data center.
Also unclear is how long Meta will remain committed to AI. The company, which generates nearly all of its revenue from advertising, has burned tens of billions of dollars on AI development without any clear returns. Meta previously invested heavily in virtual reality before pulling back from that loss-making industry.
The AI products that Meta has released have been lackluster and, in recent days, a source of embarrassment.
Its large language models have failed to attract the large user bases created by rivals OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. In investor calls, Meta has claimed that its AI tools have boosted its in-house operations and productivity. However, in recent weeks, hackers gained access to thousands of Instagram accounts by simply asking Meta’s support chatbot for authorization. (A Meta spokesperson claimed “the A.I. agent” was not at fault, and said “the underlying cause” had been addressed.)
Undeterred by its blunders, Meta has continued to spend on AI infrastructure at a frantic pace. Last week, a researcher published photos of the tents that Meta has erected in Ohio to house billions of dollars’ worth of its AI chips. The use of tents rather than warehouses has allowed the company to expand its computational capacity more rapidly.
To cover the costs of Zuckerberg’s AI construction blitz, the Financial Times reported last week that Meta “is considering raising tens of billions of dollars in a stock offering.” Shareholders responded to the news by triggering a selloff. Meta’s stock is down 8.88% since June 4.
This Week in Zuck:
Meta has removed an unreleased facial recognition system integrated into an AI app for users of the company’s smart glasses, following an exposé in Wired. Civil society groups have previously urged Meta not to release a facial recognition product due to potential privacy risks for the billions of people who use its platforms. In a statement to Wired, a Meta spokesperson said, “No final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything.” (Wired)
Meta is seeking a contempt order from a US court against the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, accusing it of breaching a permanent injunction prohibiting it from targeting WhatsApp. NSO Group, whose clients include many authoritarian governments, has previously implied that spyware attacks against WhatsApp users are essential to its business model. (Reuters)
Meta does not appear to be interested in Trump’s plan to have the American public enter into a “partnership” with the leading artificial intelligence companies. “Honestly, it’s just not something that I’ve spent — we’ve spent a ton of time on,” Meta global affairs executive Joel Kaplan said on Wednesday after being asked about the government taking a “sizable equity stake” in AI companies. “Most of the time we spend with government is talking about the policies that the government can put in place to enable the AI revolution to take place, and for us to win the battle with China,” he added. (Politico)
On Wednesday, Sony Pictures released the trailer for The Social Reckoning, a dramatized portrayal of the whistleblower who, in 2021, exposed Facebook for failing to hinder human traffickers on its platforms and knowingly creating algorithms that encouraged young people to self-harm and engage in disordered eating, among other societal ills. The movie stars Jeremy Strong as Zuckerberg and is a sequel to the Oscar-winning 2010 film The Social Network. (Variety)
Oligarch Roundup
Labour officials condemn Musk for whipping up race riots in the UK. After a Sudanese man was charged Tuesday with attempted murder in a knife attack in Belfast, Musk shared a list of protest locations compiled by far-right activist Tommy Robinson. “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!” Musk wrote in the post. Race riots have since erupted in the UK, particularly in Belfast, where cars and buildings have been set on fire by mobs chanting “foreigners out.” In response to Musk’s posts, Labour Party Chair Anna Turley accused him of “seeking to drive and exploit a situation,” adding, “We’ve seen children, families having to flee their homes on the streets of Belfast last night.” The comments by Musk, including calling the term asylum-seeker “a false and evil propaganda word,” came after he had posted for weeks about Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old student in England who was killed in December by a 23-year-old British Sikh. (Politico)
OpenAI files confidential S-1 paperwork for its initial public offering. OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, appears poised to go public sometime this year at a target valuation of at least $1 trillion. The weakened safeguards adopted by some major market indices to fast-track SpaceX’s inclusion would also benefit the company. That could prove dangerous for middle-class workers, whose retirement accounts would be exposed to the inherent volatility of OpenAI’s business, which includes approximately $100 billion in debt, plans to spend $1.4 trillion over the next several years, and an unlikely path toward profitability. OpenAI’s filing came shortly after Anthropic, another leading artificial intelligence company, submitted its confidential S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Wired)
Jeff Bezos embarks on press blitz to boost his new AI company. The centibillionaire has recently spoken with CNBC, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He used the interviews to insist that AI will be the catalyst for “multiple golden ages,” a series of “incredible miracles,” and the creation of more new jobs than it will eliminate. Thanks to AI, Bezos told the Journal, there will “be two-earner income households where one earner drops out of the labor pool, because there’s going to be so much productivity.” He also insisted that he is not being secretive about his Prometheus AI company, which recently raised $12 billion from major investors, even though very little is publicly known about what exactly the venture is developing and how it will operate. (Financial Times)
Bill Gates tells Congres that Jeffrey Epstein used knowledge of his “infidelities” against him. “These affairs had nothing to do with my interactions with Epstein,” Gates, the centibillionaire cofounder of Microsoft, claimed in his opening statement before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “... Epstein was working to use information about my infidelities — in addition to many lies that he layered on top — to pressure me to re-engage with him.” He also asserted that he never witnessed Epstein’s “ongoing criminal conduct” and only communicated with him in the hopes of raising “billions of dollars” for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For his part, Epstein, the late sex criminal, claimed in a draft email that he once helped Gates obtain drugs “in order to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls.” (CNN)
Indian billionaires won Trump’s favor after investing heavily in a startup backed by Don Jr. Earlier this year, America First Refining, a Texas energy startup backed by Trump Jr., received a nine-figure investment from a company owned by the family of Anant Ambani, the son of the richest man in Asia. As the Ambanis finalized their investment in America First Refining, the Trump administration agreed to allow Reliance to purchase Venezuelan oil and later granted Indian companies a waiver to purchase Russian crude. (ProPublica)
Amazon borrows $17.5 billion from several leading US banks to help cover its ballooning AI-related expenditures. The company took out the loan the day after raising another C$14 billion (about $10 billion) in a Canadian bond sale. In all, Amazon has raised more than $80 billion in external financing this year. (TechCrunch)
We live in a new age of the Robber Barons. We need laws that will rein in this group, just as the last ones were.
Not exactly a golden age for three prominent members of the Epstein class. Musk repackages Ponzi schemes as part of a public offering; Zuckerberg is imploding with AI and continues to learn that child porn is his only money maker; and, Bezos continues his public relations tour that has, so far, only sparked outrage.