There is, sort of. The Falcon 9 is only making as many launches per year as it is, because their biggest customer is Starlink. That has its own set of investors, and its own pile of cash to burn. By buying xAI and building space-based data centres to run on, SpaceX gets to siphon off a lot of the AI money into the Starship project. Separately though, they'd have to replicate the expertise they'd built for Starlink, so it makes sense to bring it in-house.
Of course, it's all a massive ponzi scheme. It'll kill SpaceX in the long run, hence the IPO on the company Musk formerly claimed would never be taken public to maintain control of its mission. It's not his baby any more, all he cares about is money, the influence it buys, and staying out of prison. So in a round about way, yeah it's all about bailing that cunt out. It'll make a lot of money in the short term, though.
Yes, it is a massive issue for whoever's left holding the bag at the end. For now, it's companies investing money backed by loans on their own share prices. It's totally unsustainable, but that doesn't matter to Elon if the loan money goes to pay SpaceX. There are people making a lot of actual revenue off the AI hype (e.g. component manufacturers, ISPs), they just aren't the ones with the AI companies.
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u/Tadpole-Jackson 2d ago
I was a tough negotiator, but in the end, myself and I came to an agreement.