That’s what it seems like, especially given that he was very financially exposed with the Twitter purchase; which, when combined with Tesla’s ailing fortunes, may have put more pressure on him to engage in financial shenanigans and dump it onto his sycophantic backers.
When did America stop dreaming big? On colonizing/exploring Mars and hating on Musk
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That’s what it seems like, especially given that he was very financially exposed with the Twitter purchase; which, when combined with Tesla’s ailing fortunes, may have put more pressure on him to engage in financial shenanigans and dump it onto his sycophantic backers.
He just bailed himself out of his Twitter acquisition liabilities using investor money for xAI.
xAI is most notably a company with no particular value outside of the pile of GPUs it received from Tesla in another self-dealing scheme led by Musk.
I assume he pulled this stunt to buy himself out of his Twitter acquisition liabilities before they were called in as its financiers look at the declining Tesla stock and Tesla brand that underwrote it.
It should be noted, that it's a not very well kept "secret" that Musk raises huge sums of money for xAI on the premise that participating in xAI will buy a placeholder to be able to participate in SpaceX investments at a later date.
xAI is most notably a company with no particular value outside of the pile of GPUs it received from Tesla in another self-dealing scheme led by Musk.
I assume he pulled this stunt to buy himself out of his Twitter acquisition liabilities before they were called in as its financiers look at the declining Tesla stock and Tesla brand that underwrote it.
It should be noted, that it's a not very well kept "secret" that Musk raises huge sums of money for xAI on the premise that participating in xAI will buy a placeholder to be able to participate in SpaceX investments at a later date.
I think it's a couple of things:
- restructuring the debt to insulate himself from TSLA valuation risk
- revaluing Twitter using a transaction he controls so he can set a valuation without involving any independent investors
- probably money laundering
Space X is likely the only thing that remain valuable amount Musk's asset. However, I am not sure it will remain that way. It will be hard for countries to trust Space X now. While Space X has a head start on the satellite communications, I am sure many are trying to catch up.
Standard S&P500 index fund, plus a proportionate short position against Tesla. I don't think any fund operator cares to sell that as a package, though.
Unusually, it's not redundant here, in this uniquely particular circumstance!Two standards? Sorry couldn't help myself.
I know it's old hat at this point but the title of this thread gets me every time with how absurd it is. Like the implication that "dreaming big" or having any aspirations in space or technology requires you to be a muskbro while you do it.
good news everyone! Arktek_ inc. will now be sold to arkAI for a discounted sum of $69420 billion, down from the original value of $99999 trillion. Funding comes from a diverse group of entrepreneurs from Ark-Tek investments AIArk and Tek-Ark AI acceleration. We look forward to the future technological breakthroughs guided by our talented team.
As if we needed more evidence xAI buying X is a total scam, in December 2024 (yup, last December), xAI had a Series C funding round that valued the company at $50 B. So in less than three months, somehow xAI has become $30 B more valuable? Just exactly what has xAI done in three months to almost double the value of the company?
If we had an SEC, this would deserve a close look.
If we had an SEC, this would deserve a close look.
Wouldn't it be simpler to make a broad investment fund that just didn't include TSLA?
Even SEC fuckery aside, there’s the AI bubble. More knowledgeable people here can say that it’s essentially much less capable than its backers claim. Even established companies like Microsoft and Salesforce are going all in with sizable investments, so it’s safe to say we haven’t seen the top yet. When the rug gets pulled, it could get ugly, though.
Elon’s just riding the coattails of a trend with nothing new to offer.
Elon’s just riding the coattails of a trend with nothing new to offer.
Heh. In the past, there was regulatory capture, but this takes the concept to another level.
Honestly, back on the Mars thing, what's the hurry? It will still be there in a billion years.
We could send Musk and his most devout followers in our lifetime?
It's unlikely the US will be able to do any such thing with the government dismantled.
edit: but it sounds expensive compared to just putting them in prison.
If society really devolves, they will be in gilded prisons, in a sense—their own secure compounds.
Yeah, but they're more likely to voluntarily go and they would have much less ability to influence society.
I'm guessing his personal stake in X.ai is smaller than his personal stake in X.com so it's just a way of using other people's money to bail himself out.
This is also a way to get around any residual data use restrictions from Twitter. Any company you have an account on usually has a clause in any privacy agreement that the data can be sold in the event that the company fails or is acquired. Presto magico, all Twitter data belongs to an AI company now. That and all future data will feed their Grok AI.
It seems inevitable that the world's greatest AI will be built on a database of the world's greatest shitposting forum.
How can it be money laundering if nothing changes hands except stock?
Because bad actors can "invest" in xAI at inflated valuations. For example Kingdom Holdings aka the Saudis. There's not really any legal barrier to assigning inflated valuations, even before the coup, so if I want to launder my ill-gotten gains I just "invest" at a nonsense valuation, and then the money's not mine, it's xAI's, and xAI can use it to lobby the government or do whatever else their "investors" deem appropriate.
I suppose if a person's lobbying interests coincided with a companies that would work. And the specific valuation doesn't really matter in that case. But the purchase of another company in stock doesn't really affect that use case. Laundering is typically dirty money in, clean money minus washing fees out. Spending that investment money on propping up an unprofitable acquisition would seem to be counter to the intent of laundering.
It would seem that way, if you were to deliberately ignore the fact the business in question happens to belong to the newly installed Dictator's Grand Vizier. Fortunately that's not something we're going to be ignoring in this thread.
Elon was already able to direct any money in XAi to lobbying. And the same for X. Having X get bought out doesn't seem to improve his ability to do that at all, it mostly seems to preserve the viability of X and resistance to financial pressures. He's just rewarding himself with basic self dealing. I really don't see the lobbying angle that benefits him.
He buried a failing company in a still ostensibly non-failing one that still draws investors. This is a way for foreign interests to invest money that could be used for lobbying, thus circumventing their legal requirement for registration under FARA as foreign lobbyists.
Genuinely baffled at what kind of argument you're trying to make here, you claim it doesn't improve his ability to lobby then go on to explain specifically how it improves his ability to lobby. Musk is infamous for being being constantly over-leveraged, of being equity rich but cash poor. I don't even need to connect the dots in this argument, they're already connected. This is naked corruption staring you in the face. This has all the hallmarks of a behind-the-scenes bailout that buys foreign actors influence within the current junta.
This doesn't change his situation of equity rich but cash poor. Please describe the lobbying example he can now perform that he wouldn't have been able to pre buyout. I get this is corruption, just not the type you are alleging.
If this was a case of a foreign company buying an American company, that logic holds. But in the case of a partially foreign owned US company buying a partially foreign owned US company, no similar advantage is gained.
OK, since you're genuinely asking, here's how this goes.
There are like 10 different things going on, but the most important thing is that the US allows for a certain amount of equity or stock in a company to be held without disclosure, i.e. anonymously. This is typically done with beneficiary ownership, i.e. if you buy Tesla stock today, you will not appear in the stock registry but your bank or broker does - they hold the stock in your name. This works up to a point, I believe it's 9% of outstanding shares or 10% of equity in the USA, by which point the ultimate holder must be registered and is subject to a bunch of additional KYC type investigation. So one of the most important ways in which pumping the valuation of a company is very important for lobbying efforts, is to allow that anonymous portion of an investment to be made as large as possible. With a 100B valuation, xAI would be able to accept - essentially - political donations up to $9B anonymously, while a more realistic $100M valuation would allow only $9M.
Additionally, these types of transactions happen through shell entities. It's not quite true that you're anonymous when you buy shares or equity in xAI of less than 9% - a lot of transaction information including the transaction entity is still required to be registered. I don't know exactly what it's called in the US, but in Europe this is called a UBO declaration (ultimate beneficial owner declaration). The trick here is to put this equity into a shell company (a company that only exists to own this particular bit of equity) and maybe shell that a couple more times, every time registering that shell entity in a country that benefits you in some kind of way. For instance, one shell entity has no extradition treaty with the US, another is allowed to withhold the names of investors, another again is not required to pay any taxes on capital gains. With traditional manipulative foreign actors (and yes, this has existed for hundreds of years now), each individual contribution is so small as to make it impractical to set up like a million different shell entities to be able to donate a couple billion. By increasing the investment amounts, this whole game becomes way easier.
It's a bit depressing to view the world this way, but consider every large foreign investment as a bribe of about 10% of the valuation of a company. So with xAI now worth 80B on paper, this means the Saudis have just bought Elon and Trump for about $8B. Plus whatever else they pumped into a bunch of other companies through that same mechanism.
There are like 10 different things going on, but the most important thing is that the US allows for a certain amount of equity or stock in a company to be held without disclosure, i.e. anonymously. This is typically done with beneficiary ownership, i.e. if you buy Tesla stock today, you will not appear in the stock registry but your bank or broker does - they hold the stock in your name. This works up to a point, I believe it's 9% of outstanding shares or 10% of equity in the USA, by which point the ultimate holder must be registered and is subject to a bunch of additional KYC type investigation. So one of the most important ways in which pumping the valuation of a company is very important for lobbying efforts, is to allow that anonymous portion of an investment to be made as large as possible. With a 100B valuation, xAI would be able to accept - essentially - political donations up to $9B anonymously, while a more realistic $100M valuation would allow only $9M.
Additionally, these types of transactions happen through shell entities. It's not quite true that you're anonymous when you buy shares or equity in xAI of less than 9% - a lot of transaction information including the transaction entity is still required to be registered. I don't know exactly what it's called in the US, but in Europe this is called a UBO declaration (ultimate beneficial owner declaration). The trick here is to put this equity into a shell company (a company that only exists to own this particular bit of equity) and maybe shell that a couple more times, every time registering that shell entity in a country that benefits you in some kind of way. For instance, one shell entity has no extradition treaty with the US, another is allowed to withhold the names of investors, another again is not required to pay any taxes on capital gains. With traditional manipulative foreign actors (and yes, this has existed for hundreds of years now), each individual contribution is so small as to make it impractical to set up like a million different shell entities to be able to donate a couple billion. By increasing the investment amounts, this whole game becomes way easier.
It's a bit depressing to view the world this way, but consider every large foreign investment as a bribe of about 10% of the valuation of a company. So with xAI now worth 80B on paper, this means the Saudis have just bought Elon and Trump for about $8B. Plus whatever else they pumped into a bunch of other companies through that same mechanism.
The US is trying to put something like UBO in place (Beneficial Ownership Information) and it's hitting heavy sledding because people who benefit from anonymous shell companies don't like their names actually being associated with those anonymous shell companies. The courts have been bouncing it around for a bit and the lawsuits are almost certainly going to continue. And who knows what this administration will do.
You know this administration is going back to the old nineteenth century ways. Want benefits from the government—that will come via patronage and/or fealty. The subject of this thread is an excellent case in point. He dedicated significant sums to get Trump elected, and is now at the levers of power. How it will play out is anyone’s guess, though, at this point.
It's worse. The US Govt. paid Elon Musk to de facto take it over and gut it. He's a forgotten Dotcom-era husk of a Musk if not for the US Govt. largesse he's benefited from.
The US Govt. did this to itself.
It has to go because it has no instinct to survive. If anything it's been manifesting its own death wish for quite sometime through an unbroken boulevard of unforced errors.
This is how I'm feeling now, as well. I'm done voting for either party. The only way forward is to burn it to the ground.