• Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Musks old tricks aren’t working like they used to and the walls are closing in on him for Tesla.

    The latest Roadster demo is a sign that he’s relying more and more on theatrics to sell cars. Ten years ago you could kind of buy that he would have full autonomous driving at some point. Other car companies are far more advanced than him and the Chinese’s are eating his lunch on electric vehicles and beating him in every market but the US.

    He pivoted Tesla to robotics and self driving taxis but other companies are ahead of him there as well and he knows it.

    He doesn’t have any tech to set Tesla apart and justify its grossly overpriced stock.

    He wants to roll it under Space X to ride the only two advantages he has left Starlink and Rockets.

    He knows the US government under any administration won’t let either of those two go belly up and wants to link them with his other failed or failing companies.

  • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz
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    6 hours ago

    He has total control of SpaceX - he made it so “investors” have no ability to override any of his decisions.

    He doesn’t have full control over Tesla, because he’s not a majority shareholder, and the board can vote him out.

    He wants SpaceX to buy Tesla so he can have 100% control over all of it. I would place a pretty substantial bet that he buys Tesla with the same “non-voting” SpaceX shares that he sold to retail investors during the IPO.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      I mean, he self funded it with something like 180 million dollars. He didnt have to take huge amounts of investors money before that 180 million was worth a shit ton more, and he had launch contracts with NASA to generate income.

      So he made it, by building a successful company with his own money and then getting investors to take a small % of his ownership and they were seemingly happy to do it

      Edit: really, this is every founders dream. Bringing in investors has so many strings attached and he was able to build something where he could significantly limit that. If you can bootstrap your business you’ll be better off in the long run.

    • cøre@leminal.space
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      8 hours ago

      He’ll spin off another company and then merge it back in after a few years. Rinse and repeat to hide how bad the financials are/evade taxes/commit fraud

  • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    SpaceX has been largely successful, despite Musk, because of Gwynne Shotwell. So Musk shoved X (which he led directly and was falling) into xAI (which was basically failing because it’s bad AI) and then shoved that into SpaceX.

    That didn’t fail, but Tesla (which Musk leads directly) is now failing, too. So hey, let’s do what worked before.

    Honestly, I’m surprised he hasn’t dumped The Boring Company on her yet.

    • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      13 hours ago

      Once read that SpaceX was so successful because they had specific strategies to distract Musk and keep his hands of the real operational stuff.

      If he merges everything, it makes me wonder if he wants to get more involved and ruin the company completely.

  • cloudshouter@lemmy.zip
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    16 hours ago

    Tesla and/or SpaceX/Grox are probably looking like Wile e. Coyote four strides past the cliff edge. Keep slamming companies together to hide the loss to earnings and make the stock value go up. Got to keep the trillionaire status and make sure he can leave someone else holding the bag.

  • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    How can you be in talks to merge with yourself?

    (I’m referring to Elon not the company. I know they have their own president and board)

  • JollyG@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The main product of SpaceX is corruption, they also have a side-business in rocketry.

    Tesla is a publicity stunt company that occasionally sells cars. It seems natural to merge the two.

  • NekoKoneko@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Let me guess, a merger helps Musk hit profitability targets that adds another few hundred billion to his total compensation, while increasing his control?

  • Alex@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    He just wants to keep rolling the dice on his poor decisions until it pays off. I guess absorbing Tesla into the one “successful” IPO will hide the losses and leave the investors holding the bag.

  • Jiral@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The outlook of Tesla isn’t great, so it is a perfect fit for SpaceX+xAI. All the brand new models are burning trash heaps, there are two cash cow models increasingly aging, even with the face lifts. It makes sense to consolidate everything into one big grift conglomerate.

    • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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      15 hours ago

      Ketamine + Nazi != shareholder value

      GROK! Solve this in a way that makes me lex Luther, not a parody of him. Make no mistakes.

    • key95@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Grok uses Claude, isn’t even using it’s own model. They gave up on that, because any competent staff they hire, leaves. Elon will go into history as the greatest incinerator of economic structure ever. The Epstein-class will forever regret letting him join. And Epstein knew…how crazy is that?

      • Jiral@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I had not heard of that. I think to stay correct, that needs some qualification. They have given up to compete with Claude on coding, so for agentic stuff the “Grok Bot” is using also Claude Opus 5.5. Grok still is an option too.

        But yeah, it does sound like they are slowly giving up to compete at the very frontier.