Item — HN Reader

I am just delighted that SpaceX continues with the "good enough" pace of development here, at least at these phases. Rapid iteration of build, test, learn, and improve rather than wait for perfection.

They are willing to have "negative outcome learning experiences" to gather data quickly. and, of course, data, data, data.

I like it because I know what insane amount of red tape has built up to do anything similar in a Gov (any Gov).

1 comments

Shame they're risking that ability with the IPO. We've seen how irrational and ignorant stock traders are from other publicly traded space companies. Even scrubbed launches cause the price to dip.

> We've seen how irrational and ignorant stock traders are from other publicly traded space companies.

Absolutely true, but ignorant stock traders making irrational trades only matters if company management pays attention to them. Musk will maintain complete control of SpaceX even after the IPO, so he can focus on long-term value rather than short-term ups and downs.

Of course, over time, if more shares are issued, this may change.

The argument for the IPO was to fund their space datacenters project, if Musk could afford to ignore the stock price, that wouldn't be needed.

At this point in time, Musk can afford to ignore the stock price since he will retain sufficient shares (with 10x voting rights if I am understanding correctly) to outvote any board.

However, some projections I have seen suggest even the public raise won't be enough for the entire vision (which includes LEO data centers AND trips to the Moon and Mars). That means he will either have to find the revenue or eventually sell even more shares. It will only be at that point he will care about stock price.

That's the thing, why does everyone seem convinced that the guy who has been making up pie in the sky projects and breaking his promises, won't find himself wanting more money?

Have IPOs ever been about just a one time cash infusion?

He'll be able to raise debt against the massively inflated valuation of the company. SpaceX will have access to far more capital after this than before.

As I understand it he will retain control of the company in a similar arrangement to the one Zuckerberg has at Meta. Anyone who buys SpaceX stock is just along for the ride.

They get all the money on the ipo day. They dont get more if it goes after unless they sell more stock

But by the time retail traders can affect the stock price, SpaceX will have already gotten their money.

In an article from the Financial Times [1], Elon Musk will hold "more than 80 per cent of the voting power". This is pretty similar to Mark Zuckerburg's control over Meta. I don't see any risk of SpaceX losing control of their destiny due to short term demands by stockholders.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/00382ab9-3dfe-468c-8966-853cd787d...

Elon negotiated with Nasdaq to automatically accept it in Nasdaq 100 index after 15 days, so the stock traders don't really matter.

I asked about this in previous HN discussions. The old rule: You had to wait three months. Is there a meaningful economic difference between waiting 15 days or ~90 days? I don't see it. (For transparency: I own ETFs that track the S&P 500, which has lots of overlap with Nasdaq 100.) To be clear: OpenAI and Anthropic will sure IPO this year or next and have a similar effect -- they will be (or nearly) trillion dollar market caps upon listing.

If you short the company during the first 15 days, your short will get wiped out by the passive index buying. Nobody is going to short the stock to protect passive investors. The short will happen after the bag holders entered the market.

Can you point me to a source that actually says that Elon influenced the Nasdaq?

The whole thing stinks, and we can create stories since some incentives are obvious.

Stock traders do matter since 30% of stock is aimed at retail (very unusual % - what is the norm?)

More info here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X6YzlY_8tM (sorry, video)

> SpaceX has successfully lobbied the Nasdaq stock exchange to loosen rules governing how and when it adds companies to its Nasdaq 100 index – a group of large-cap companies that it bills as “fundamentally sound and innovative.”

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/21/how-elon-musk-will-increas...

I’m sure the going of public of the large AI companies wasn’t on Nasdaq’s mind at all.

Doesn't Musk retain full control anyway?

Yes, sources say over 80% of voting power.