Musk, Money and Mars

The last time we wrote about Elon Musk in this newsletter, about two months ago, he was having a very good day. SpaceX had gone public in the world’s biggest-ever initial public offering, and then rose 20 percent on its first day of trading. The world’s richest man became the world’s first trillionaire.

His last few weeks haven’t gone quite as smoothly. SpaceX’s stock has fallen nearly 50 percent from its high. It dropped again on Tuesday after SpaceX’s first earnings report and call with investors in which Musk made more bold — some say outlandish — claims. He predicted SpaceX would begin launching A.I. data centers into space next year and hit $1 trillion in revenue by 2030.

I recently spoke to my colleague Ryan Mac, a tech reporter who wrote a book, “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” with our Times colleague Kate Conger. I asked him what to make of SpaceX’s bumpy post-I.P.O. ride, and the Elon of it all.

Just a mere multi-centibillionaire

Ryan, help me understand how to think about SpaceX as a business. What’s real and what’s hype?

Most companies trade on the basis of their profit, or revenue. Their stock prices are grounded in some financial metrics. In the case of SpaceX, those metrics are out the window. Yes, SpaceX has decent business arms — particularly with its rocket launch business and Starlink, its growing satellite internet service. But overall, it’s unprofitable. The revenue it generates would not traditionally justify its trillion-dollar valuation.

But what you have to understand about SpaceX is that it’s a celebrity-led company.

What do you mean by that?

He’s one of the most well-known C.E.O.s in the world, if not the most-known C.E.O. in the world. And one of his greatest qualities is as a salesman. He is able to sell people — whether it’s his own employees or investors or the general public — on visions, and get them to believe in these massive goals that seem unachievable, like putting data centers into space or putting humans on Mars.

What’s interesting is that he can point to things that people told him he couldn’t do — like developing mass-market electric cars or building self-landing rockets — and say, “You told me I couldn’t do that, but I did. Therefore, I’ve proven you all wrong and you should bet on me for everything in the future.” And some people do — even when, as we’ve documented, he’s failed to achieve the goals he’s set more often than he’s succeeded.

It’s hard to know if investors will continue to stick with him. On Tuesday’s call, Musk made a number of predictions, including that SpaceX would hit $1 trillion in annual revenue in four years. SpaceX’s shares fell more than 10 percent in trading during that call, showing how hard it will be for Musk to keep the hype going around the company.

Elon Musk has a lot of businesses. Which matter most to his wealth, and to him personally?

SpaceX is both. Somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of his net worth comes from his SpaceX stock. It’s the company he has bet his future on. It’s his oldest company, founded in 2002, with the idea of making life multiplanetary, and that’s been his North Star for the better part of 20 years.

Then there’s Tesla, his other public company, which is now pivoting to A.I. applications and building humanoid robots. There’s Neuralink, the brain interface company. The Boring Company, a tunneling construction company. But the talk of the town right now is whether he’ll roll Tesla and SpaceX into one giant Elon Inc. He hasn’t dispelled the rumors.

Let’s talk about his wealth. He’s not a trillionaire anymore, just a multibillionaire — yesterday Bloomberg estimated his wealth at $777 billion. That’s still an awful lot of money. How real is it?

It’s very real. A lot of people get hung up on the idea that these aren’t dollars in his bank account. But these are publicly traded shares. And a lot of power comes from just holding these shares: He can take out loans against them, raise money against them.

It was hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea of the world’s first trillionaire. A billion is 10 figures of net worth. A trillion is 13 figures of net worth — it’s 1,000 billion. He’s dipped back under the trillion-dollar mark recently, as the stock market fluctuates, but he is still by far the world’s richest person.

Money is political power, especially in the U.S. What do we know about how he’s used his money for influence?

He’s clearly willing to convert his wealth into political power. He spent more than $250 million helping elect Donald Trump in 2024, and he’s gearing up to spend at least $100 million supporting Republican candidates in the coming U.S. midterm elections.

He also has a powerful megaphone in X, the platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought in 2022. He sometimes posts more than 100 times a day to his 240 million followers. He can fixate on something like the protests against migrants in Northern Ireland, for example, and become a major source of antagonism from wherever he’s sitting in the U.S. He’s backed far-right parties like the Alternative for Germany and called Marine Le Pen “France’s last hope.” Last month, Musk, an immigrant to the U.S. himself, said on X that anyone who “opposes remigration,” or the idea that migrants should be deported to their countries of origin, is a “traitor.”

What does he want, exactly? What does he want to use all this power and money for? Based on your reporting and all the conversations you’ve had with people who’ve known him, what can you tell us about the worldview of the richest man in the world?

He wants to be remembered as arguably history’s most important person, someone whose impact on mankind is undeniable. His path there? Making humans multiplanetary, which is why SpaceX is building Starship, the massive rocket he says will eventually carry a whole piece of human civilization to Mars.

Everything is in service of that. For a long time, Tesla was discussed as simply a mechanism to generate cash for his space dream. Whatever he has to do to get there — getting involved in politics, spinning off a massive I.P.O., absorbing all his companies into one — he’s going to do it.

MORE TOP NEWS

After President Trump announced a new plan last week to deliver peace and security in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave experienced a spike in deadly Israeli bombings.
Israel began strikes in southern Lebanon after accusing Hezbollah of a cease-fire violation, as negotiators from both countries held talks in Rome.
The Houthis said they struck a Saudi oil tanker in the northern Red Sea and threatened to intensify attacks to close “all access routes” to Saudi oil shipments.
The Trump administration revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador in the U.S.
Disney reached a global deal with TikTok to allow fan-created videos using its properties to appear inside its streaming service.

A FIGHT FOR THE SKIES

The war between Russia and Ukraine is increasingly occurring in the air, from a few yards above scorched tree lines to satellites in low Earth orbit, thanks to new aerial weapons and tactics.

Ukraine is using exploding drones to hit oil facilities, ports and the warehouses of Russia’s largest online retailer. Russia is setting records for its own aerial onslaughts with missiles and drones.

Yesterday, Russia launched a blistering ballistic missile attack on Kyiv and its suburbs, killing at least 17 people as it exploited gaps in depleted Ukrainian air defenses.

TOP OF THE WORLD

The most clicked link in your newsletter yesterday was about spending time with a famous Georges Seurat painting.

WHAT IN THE WORLD?

Many of America’s most powerful men are eating red meat and fermented vegetables almost exclusively these days. The diet has been adopted by several members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, who has reportedly slimmed down enough that the president has taken notice.

My colleague Willy Staley tried it for a week and talked to its main advocate: a physician named Sean O’Mara, who has been advising Trump cabinet officials. O’Mara says the protein-heavy diet is a life changer, in more ways than one: “When you start eating healthy, you don’t need toilet paper,” he claimed. Read more about the steak and sauerkraut diet.

JOB OF THE DAY

Bee veterinarian

The honeybee is an agricultural all-star. But caring for the vital pollinators — which are increasingly in danger — isn’t on the standard veterinary curriculum. The honeybee medicine program at the University of Georgia is trying to change that. Meet the vets making house calls to beehives.

MORNING READ

China monitors its 1.4 billion people with the help of cameras, cellphone signals and national IDs. When Marc Hofer, a cybersecurity researcher and journalist based in Amsterdam, came across a futuristic dashboard called “Dynamic Control Platform for Overseas Personnel,” he found a rare window into how extensively China also surveils foreigners within its borders.

The unsecured police dashboard displayed entries about people categorized by nationality, with their birth date, sex, marital status, address and occupation, and sometimes their religion. Read more about how China keeps close tabs on foreigners.

AROUND THE WORLD

When a Native American casino went to Korea

The Mohegan Tribe operates some of the biggest casinos in the United States. Eyeing a global expansion, Mohegan considered resorts in Greece and Japan before ultimately settling on South Korea. The tribe spent $1.6 billion and almost a decade building a gambling venue near Seoul with three five-star hotels, a 15,000-seat arena and a water park so lavish that Netflix filmed a reality dating show there.

Going all-in on the resort proved a risky bet: Less than a year after its 2024 grand opening, Mohegan lost control of the project because of a missed performance target. Now another investor holds the reins. Read more.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Read: The Times compiled a list of the best thrillers of the 21st century, with the help of hundreds of experts, including Stephen King.

Hope: Feeling overwhelmed? Try listening to the songs of Jack Johnson, a bard of going with the flow.

Treat: Here’s a guide to finding the right over-the-counter medication for heartburn.

Beware: Over-the-top affection in a new relationship can be a precursor to something more sinister.

RECIPE

Pasta alla norma is a traditional Sicilian dish of sautéed eggplant tossed with tomato sauce and topped with ricotta salata. It makes for a satisfying vegetarian dinner thrown together in under an hour.